Assessing the Practicality of Factor Integration Models for Olympic Programmes

Olympic sports are subject to rigorous evaluation by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ensure they align with Olympic values and appeal to a global audience. In this paper, we construct a mathematical model to quantitatively assess the overall performance of each SDE based on six core criteria proposed by the IOC, including popularity and accessibility, gender equality, sustainability, inclusiveness, relevance and innovation, and safety and fair play. We selected the following factors based on the six criteria: number of entries, total number of medals, and number of spectators for assessing popularity and accessibility; gender ratio for assessing gender equality; balanced budget and financial risk for assessing sustainability; number of participating countries to evaluate inclusiveness; proportion of young athletes and age variance for determining relevance and innovation; and injury rate for evaluating safety and fair play. We constructed a factor integration model to quantify and integrate the factors into six criteria. The model was based on a hierarchical analysis (or AHP) where we assigned different weights by comparing the importance of various factors to each other. We conclude this paper with a letter to the IOC describing the rationale for our model and its results, pointing out its usefulness, and making recommendations to the IOC for evaluating new programs and assessing SDE.