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Measuring countries’ performance at the Summer Olympic Games in Rio 2016

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Abstract

Summer Olympic games in Rio 2016 were the biggest and the most important sport event in 2016. Athletes’ performance at Olympics is always of a high interest and serve as a basis for various parametric and non-parametric analyses. In this article, we construct data envelopment analysis model to analyze countries’ performance in Summer Olympic games in Rio 2016. The traditional model structure is based on GDP-population theory. In this article, we go beyond this traditional model structure and introduce economic active population and corruption factors into the model. Similarly, the Olympic success is measured regarding medal ranking of each country. Nevertheless, we enlarge traditional golden, silver and bronze medals output structure, including medal ranking up to 8th position. This model structure enables us to also measure performance of lower performed countries that are traditionally not ranked in the medal rankings. As a complement to the achieved results, we decompose the results regarding World Bank’s income classification to be able to make conclusion of countries’ performance.

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Notes

  1. The International Olympic Committee. 2011. IOC awards US broadcast rights for 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 Olympic Games to NBCUniversal. Available at https://www.olympic.org/news/ioc-awards-us-broadcast-rights-for-2014-2016-2018-and-2020-olympic-games-to-nbcuniversal (accessed December 2, 2016).

  2. McCready, R. 2016. For Olympic Athletes, Is 30 the New 20? Available at https://venngage.com/blog/olympics/ (accessed December 26, 2016).

  3. Trading Economics. 2016. Available at http://www.tradingeconomics.com/north-korea/gdp (accessed October 15, 2016).

  4. Kosovo Agency of Statistics, available at http://ask.rks-gov.net/en/ (accessed October 15, 2016).

  5. Detailed methodology is available at: https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/378832-what-is-the-world-bank-atlas-method (accessed October 28, 2016).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank to La Salle University in México City, Mexico for the support in carrying out this work, which was done under university grant projects.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Negocios, Universidad La Salle México, Benjamín Franklin 45, Col. Condesa, 06140, Mexico City, D.F., Mexico

    M. Flegl

  2. Facultad de Negocios, Universidad La Salle México, Mexico City, Mexico

    L. A. Andrade

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  1. M. Flegl
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  2. L. A. Andrade
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Correspondence to M. Flegl.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 11, 12, 13 and 14.

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Flegl, M., Andrade, L.A. Measuring countries’ performance at the Summer Olympic Games in Rio 2016. OPSEARCH 55, 823–846 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12597-018-0347-8

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