Winter Olympics

The Winter Olympics is a momentous occasion that is typically welcomed by its host city and its citizens. However, hosting these Olympic games comes with its share of risks. These arise or are compounded by the massive influx of athletes and spectators, underlying political issues, the weather, and other factors.

In this guide, we discuss the risks associated with the Winter Olympics that insurance professionals may find amusing or interesting to consider, or so they can recommend the appropriate coverage to clients hosting other large events.

What risks come with the Winter Olympics?

The insurance issues for the 2026 Winter Olympics center on a few broad categories. These can translate into large financial exposures for organizers and stakeholders across the world.

Risk checklist for insurers and brokers

When figuring out which cover is most needed and appropriate for the Winter Olympics, knowing the risks associated with this sporting event is the first step. The most common risks to insure against include:

1. Athlete injury and liability

Winter sports carry high injury rates, so winter Olympics injury risk is one of the core exposures. Research across several Olympic winter games editions finds that an overall injury incidence of about 9.6% of athletes, with snow sports the highest at about 11.3%. The riskiest events include snowboard cross and aerials and slopestyle in freestyle skiing, with injury rates between about 28% and 31%. Knees, heads, and ankles are the most affected areas.

You can look up the study for the likelihood of athlete injuries for each of these sports. Earlier work from the IOC's medical program also flagged these as high-risk sports:

• ice hockey (get dental insurance!)
• short track speed skating
• alpine skiing
• freestyle skiing
• snowboarding

Meanwhile, Nordic events like cross country skiing and Nordic combined tend to see lower injury rates.

To provide the appropriate coverage, insurance professionals are advised to provide:

• Accidental death and injury cover for athletes and team staff.
• Liability policies for the Olympic committee, local organizing committee and venue operators if negligence contributes to a winter Olympics injury.
• Medical expense cover, even for less risky disciplines such as figure skating, which still sees notable rates of illness and overuse injuries.

2. Venues, infrastructure, and snowmaking

The 2026 Olympic games in Milan–Cortina will rely heavily on artificial snow. Italy has already produced around 1.6 million cubic meters of "technical snow" for Games venues, supported by large high‑elevation reservoirs, including a basin in Livigno that holds about 200 million liters of water and can feed systems that generate roughly 800 million liters of snow. This scenario creates several property and liability exposures like:

• Damage to ski courses, lifts, the hockey arena, and indoor ice facilities from storms, avalanches or structural failure.
• Equipment breakdown or power failure in snowmaking systems that support alpine skiing, freestyle skiing, and other events.
• Environmental liability tied to water use and artificial snow in sensitive alpine areas.

Property and builders' risk policies, plus environmental liability coverage, respond to these exposures for the host city venues and private operators.

3. Event cancellation, postponement and non‑appearance

Large sporting events like the Olympic games buy high‑limit event cancellation and revenue‑protection cover. The IOC has historically purchased around $800 million worth of protection for each Summer Games, mainly to protect broadcast and sponsorship income if the event is cancelled or postponed. In the case of the Winter Games, this typically requires lower limits but uses similar structures. Cancellation or disruption triggers can include:

• Severe weather or lack of snow that wipes out key events such as alpine skiing, freestyle skiing, or cross-country skiing.
• Natural catastrophes like earthquakes or floods.
• Terrorism or civil unrest.
• Communicable disease, although after COVID‑19 many policies now exclude broad pandemic risk, which drove heavy claims for Tokyo 2020.

Stakeholders that may buy their own event cancellation and non‑appearance cover include:

• The local organizing committee and the host city entities
• Broadcasters, especially in the United States, which rely on advertising tied to Olympic games scheduling
• National Olympic committee bodies and major sponsors

Some risks, such as venues not being finished on time or teams choosing not to travel, are often excluded and require separate negotiation if cover is available at all.

4. Political risk and security

During the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, market commentary identified the threat of war in Ukraine as the biggest concern for Winter Games insurers. That conflict could have forced withdrawals or boycotts and triggered appearance and cancellation claims. For Milan–Cortina 2026, relevant political risk factors include:

• Geopolitical tensions affecting travel, boycotts, or sanctions.
• Civil unrest in Italy or nearby states.
• Terrorism, which is usually limited or excluded under standard war and terrorism clauses and then bought back through specialist terrorism and political violence cover.

From an insurance standpoint:

• Political violence and terrorism policies protect venues, hotels, and fan zones.
• Broader political risk cover can respond to government actions that block or restrict the Olympic winter games, though terms are tight, and capacity is limited.

5. Cyber risk

Recent reporting shows pro‑Russian hacker groups have already targeted Italian government and Olympic winter games‑related sites with distributed denial‑of‑service attacks, including attacks on hotels and local portals around Cortina d'Ampezzo. Italian authorities say they repelled these attempts and deployed additional cyber teams in partnership with the national Olympic committee.

Cyber exposures include:

Disruption to ticketing, transport, and access control systems.

Ransomware or data theft affecting volunteers, athletes and visitors.

Attacks on broadcast infrastructure that hit advertising revenues.

Cyber insurance for the organizing committee, key vendors, and some large national delegations helps absorb incident response costs, business interruption and third‑party liability linked to these attacks.

6. Climate, weather and environmental volatility

Climate change is reshaping the Olympic winter games, and there are concerns that many insurers are not prepared to address such risks. Northern Italy now has significantly fewer freezing days than in 1956, and February temperatures around Cortina are several degrees warmer than they were seventy years ago. Risks of this type for the 2026 Winter Olympics include:

• Too little snow or too much warmth, which can threaten events like cross country skiing, Nordic combined and alpine skiing, and raise safety concerns on deteriorating courses.
• Heavy snow or storms that shut down transport or cause training cancellations, as seen when recent downhill sessions in Cortina were called off.
• Environmental criticism or regulatory action related to intensive artificial snowmaking and water use around the host city venues.

Weather and non‑appearance insurance policies help protect organizers when individual races or days are lost, while full event cancellation policies address more severe scenarios.

7. Stakeholder‑specific exposures

Different stakeholders face distinct insurance issues like:

• The IOC and global Olympic committee network focus on revenue protection from broadcasting and sponsorship and on liability tied to the overall Olympics and Paralympics program.
• The Milan–Cortina host city structures, venue owners and local partners carry property, construction and public liability risks for arenas, including any hockey arena hosting ice hockey.
• The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee and US broadcasters in the United States buy their own appearance, liability, cyber, and travel covers, given the scale of American commercial exposure to sporting events of this size.

For insurers that cater to US brokers and agents, the main touchpoints are:

• Travel and health covers for US spectators and corporate hospitality guests.
• Liability and property covers for US sponsors' pavilions and activations.
• Reinsurance and specialty lines participation in the large global towers that support Olympic games property, liability, event cancellation and political risk programs.

What does it take to insure the Winter Olympics?

Insuring this major sporting event is no small undertaking. It comes as no surprise for insurers to feel some apprehension when providing coverage and hope for it to go smoothly.

That's partly why it can take years of advanced planning, high‑limit multi‑line programs, deep hazard modelling, and tight contract and wording work. A global panel of insurers and reinsurers willing to share very concentrated, but finite‑duration risks is also instrumental in successfully covering an event of this scale.

For the 2026 Winter Olympics, insurance giant Allianz is again the official insurer. This industry giant entered a deal where they will remain the official insurer for the Olympics (and Paralympics) until 2032. Here's a rundown of how insurers and brokers can manage an event as massive as the Winter Olympics:

• Build a long‑term, multi‑line insurance program (property, liability, contingency, cyber, etc.) with high limits and shared capacity from global insurers and reinsurers.
• Put robust construction and professional covers in place for all venues and engineering work, with contracts, limits and wordings aligned to the strict obligations and deadlines.
• Arrange a large contingency tower for cancellation, postponement and disruption, tailored to weather, natural catastrophes, communicable disease exclusions, venue failure and non‑appearance risk.
• Secure comprehensive operational property and liability cover for venues, spectators, athletes, staff and temporary structures once the Games move from build phase to live events.
• Add specialist protections for terrorism, political violence, cyber incidents, and travel‑related issues affecting organizers, broadcasters, teams, sponsors and spectators.
• Coordinate all stakeholders (IOC, organizing committee, venue owners, contractors, broadcasters, sponsors) so that responsibilities, exclusions and policy wordings line up and there are no uninsured gaps.

The odds are that you are not personally going to insure the Winter Olympics, but there's plenty to learn here and apply to the events you'll be working on with your insurance company!

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