The most dramatic and high-profile of world spectacles have been the modern Olympic Games and the men’s football World Cup, events owned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and FIFA (the governing body of world football). Such sporting encounters and contests have provided a source of and focus for the staging of spectacle and, in an era of international mass communications, the media event. The growth of FIFA and the IOC, and of their major events, has provided a platform for the articulation and expression of national pride and prestige. Greece saw the symbolic potential of staging an international event such as the first modern Olympics in 1896 to.
