IOC publishes Paris 2024 online abuse report
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has published its Online Abuse and Sport report for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, outlining the scale of abusive content directed at athletes and online communities during the events.
Released on Friday to mark Safe Sport Day on August 8, the report draws on findings from the IOC’s Cyber-Abuse Protection Service (CAPS). The monitoring effort identified nearly 25,000 abusive messages from 4.3 million posts and comments across the two Games.
At Paris 2024, the IOC said it monitored around 20,000 accounts in 45 languages. For Milano Cortina 2026, it tracked more than 6,000 accounts in 56 languages. Across both events, AI systems flagged approximately 242,000 posts and comments as potentially abusive for human review. That process later verified around 24,700 abusive posts and comments.
The IOC said the publication of the report is part of an effort to improve athlete protection and safeguard online communities.
"Online abuse is a significant safeguarding issue across sport and, while it takes place online, it does not remain confined to digital spaces and can cause real and lasting physical, psychological, reputational and economic harm", the IOC announced.
The committee also said that even when abusive content does not meet the threshold for removal by platforms or criminal prosecution, it can still be damaging. IOC said these harmful online behaviours are still "lawful but awful".
"(It) can still cause real and lasting harm. This emphasises the need for prevention strategies, education and digital literacy, and response mechanisms that recognise the broader impact of online abuse", IOC said.
The report’s findings were published as the IOC called for better protection of athletes and stronger safeguarding of online communities.