Over the years, the city has also become home to most of Quebec’s provincial sports federations, several of the country’s national sports federations and a host of professional clubs.
The Olympic Stadium in Montreal reflects both the positive and challenging aspects of its Games legacy. Presently, it stands as an acclaimed architectural masterpiece, serving as a venue for various cultural, commercial, and national and international sporting events. Over the years, it has welcomed 66 million visitors from 1976 to 2011, and was in use for 239 days in 2017. While deficits from its construction were resolved in 2006, they have left a lingering controversy, making the stadium a subject of debate in its category.
Support for Canadian athletes
The Montreal Games provided a focal point for the development of funding programmes supporting Canadian athletes. Founded in 1977, the ongoing Athlete Assistance Programme (AAP) has since assisted over 15,000 of the country’s sportspeople, making more than CAD 512 million available to enable them to compete at the highest level. It also allows them to continue pursuing their careers in tandem with work or study commitments, contributing to training, living and tuition costs and other special needs.
Over 1,900 elite Canadian athletes across more than 80 sporting disciplines currently receive monthly stipends from the AAP, some 15 per cent of them Para athletes. Support continued during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Canadian government making a further CAD 5 million available to the AAP in May 2020.
International visibility
After the Expo ‘67 World Fair nine years earlier, Montreal 1976 enhanced the global visibility of Quebec’s largest city. Between 1980 and 2000, tourist numbers grew by 19 per cent and annual tourist spending by 62.5 per cent. In capitalising on its status as an Olympic host city, Montreal began to host other major sporting events, such as the Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix, and major cultural happenings, such as the International Jazz Festival and the Montreal Comedy Festival.
Economics of Montreal 1976
The Olympic Games Montreal 1976 totalled CAD 606 million in revenue, CAD 383 million in operating expenses (hosting the Games) and CAD 1.21 billion in capital expenditure (i.e. investment in sports venue construction). Right after the Games, the repayment of the debt from capital expenditure was structured over a period of 30 years through two major sources of income. Firstly, the Olympic Lottery – created to fund the Games – was extended by the parliament and became Lotto Canada, which paid part of the Games deficit through to the end of 1979 and has since made millions of Canadian dollars available for amateur sport. Secondly, Quebec raised a provincial tax on tobacco as the main avenue to repay the debt, which was fully paid in 2006.
The funding model pursued by the Organising Committee – based on a sponsorship, licensing and supplier programme and Canada’s first national lottery scheme – did not generate enough revenues to fully cover the capital expenditures but would be more successfully adopted by future Olympic host cities in funding Games operations.
Sports infrastructure
The centrepiece of Montreal’s Olympic venues is the Olympic Park, home to the Olympic Stadium, Olympic Velodrome, Olympic Pool and the Olympic Village, all of which were new venues.
A cultural, sporting, and commercial hub for the people of Montreal, the Olympic Park has welcomed over 100 million visitors since 1976. The Olympic Pool, which attracts approximately 250,000 recreational users a year, continues to host Canada’s national championships and Olympic trials, while the Olympic Velodrome is now the Biodome, one of Canada’s largest natural science museum complexes.
The Olympic Stadium remains in use all year round. Though a controversial venue due to its construction costs and a series of structural problems with the roof, the Big O, as it is known by Montreal residents, is recognised as a world-renowned architectural masterpiece and a symbol of the city.
A total of 15 existing venues were also used at Montreal 1976. They include the Maurice Richard Arena (boxing and freestyle wrestling), the Pierre Charbonneau Centre (wrestling), the Winter Stadium (fencing) and the Molson Stadium (field hockey). Fourteen of these venues remain in use today, most of them providing sporting facilities for elite athletes and local residents alike, while one has been dismantled.
Les Jeux de Montréal
Les Jeux de Montréal (Montreal Games) have given more than half a million local young athletes their very first taste of sporting competition at some of the city’s finest facilities. Building on the momentum provided by Montreal 1976, Les Jeux were set up two years later as a celebratory annual multi-sports event for children aged 6 to 12.
Held over five days yearly, Les Jeux de Montréal have the support of local authorities, sports associations, clubs, volunteers, administrators and financial partners. More than 15,000 young athletes took part in qualifying for the 2019 event. Some 5,000 of them made the finals, for which 22,000 spectators turned up at 17 venues across the city to watch 29 competitions unfold.
