The PRE-Coverage of the Folha De São Paulo Newspaper of the Olympic Games Rio/2016

Sporting events in Brazil made possible the “so-called” decade of the sport. From 2007, starting with the Pan American Games in Rio, then the Soccer World Cup in Brazil/2014, until the Olympic Games (OG) in Rio de Janeiro/2016. Brazil was on the international media agenda due to the coverage of the events mentioned above. Millions and sometimes billions of people around the world were following the Olympic Games via the press. The Olympic Games in Rio 2016 alone had a 3.5 billion of viewers (half of the global population) who watched at least a minute of the Olympic events (Source: COI, 2016). This research aimed to analyze the coverage of covers of the Folha de São Paulo/Brazil newspaper about the pre-Olympic Games Rio/2016 period. This is a qualitative and descriptive study, having as corpus the covers of the Folha de São Paulo newspaper from July 1st to August 4th, 2016 (representing the pre-event period until its opening date). The analysis was performed using the Content Analysis of Bardin (2011). The qualitatively analyzed data formed five categories: “Cultural Aspects”; “Event Costs”; “Organization of the Event”; “Athletes training/sports performance” and “ Political and Social Issues." We concluded that during the pre-event the Folha de São Paulo newspaper emphasized aspects related to public money and organization and preparation for the event, for instance, security plan, financing of the games and problems with the Olympic Village.