This article uses Elias's game model perspective to analyse the planning of the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer. The study shows how the original Olympic plan that was sold to the International Olympic Committee with the slogan of a `Compact Games' won the bid, but was subsequently transformed due to changes in power balances among the domestic and international players who had conflicting interests. For example, the `Green Games' was not part of Lillehammer's original bid and only emerged as a central feature of the event after complex and protracted negotiations among competing interest groups. It is argued that some of the most important aspects connected to mega-events like the Olympics are due not only to `rational' planning processes, but also to how the attendant conflicts and compromises among interest groups lead to unintended outcomes.

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