Opposition group faces long odds
NOlympics LA focused on bid’s social issues
It’s an often-repeated quip from Mayor Eric Garcetti when he discusses the 88% support in Los Angeles for the city’s Olympic bid.
In his business, almost nothing polls that well — not even sunshine.
It’s a line Garcetti has been able to get plenty of mileage out of because it highlights something the International Olympic Committee wants to see in its bid cities. As opposition groups and lack of support have sunk bids in recent years, that support matters.
It will certainly be what the IOC looks at as a grass-roots group, NOlympics LA, starts a seemingly uphill battle to stop the Olympics from coming to Los Angeles.
“It’s very high, but not unanimous,” Garcetti said of public support. “It’s obviously something that we’ll reach out consistently to any group to engage them, to make sure that we can address those concerns. This is something I get more pressure from my constituents to do than not to do.” These days, that is rare. Organized opposition or lack of political support has largely contributed to eight cities, including Boston, pulling out of the bidding process in the last two cycles. Only four have remained in the vote — Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, for 2022 and Los Angeles and Paris for 2024.
NOlympics LA is a smaller operation than the group that worked against Boston and has been in existence for a few months. It faces the challenges of a bid that has support, due partly to fond memories of the 1984 Games and the IOC’s moves toward giving Los Angeles and Paris each an Olympics, either in 2024 or 2028.
While previous opposition groups have focused primarily on the financial risks, NOlympics LA is building its messaging around social issues.
“What happened is there’s been a sea change and gestalt about what the Olympics is for a city,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economist and professor at Smith College who has studied the Olympics.
“All the mythology about putting the city on the map and attracting tourism and foreign investment and so on, that whole gestalt was the major view that people held of the Olympics. I think that the experiences in Sochi and Beijing and Rio and elsewhere have changed that gestalt.”
He added, “That new understanding of the Olympics has been disseminated. ... More and more people are skeptical.”
MOVEMENT UNDERWAY Nowhere is that skepticism more apparent than in Boston, where No Boston Olympics helped sink that bid. Facing mounting opposition and questions throughout early 2015, Boston 2024 saw support for its bid continue to drop.
Ultimately, Mayor Marty Walsh said he could not sign the IOC’s host city contract that would require Boston to cover cost overruns. Walsh dismissed the No Boston Olympics organizers as “10 people on Twitter,” but that guarantee was the focus of the group’s opposition to the bid.
“I think fundamentally cities are coming to realize that the IOC’s demands are really outra- geous and incompatible with what cities need in terms of their growth and development,” said Chris Dempsey, co-chair of No Boston Olympics. “The things the IOC forces you to do and spend money on are just not the things that are going to make your city great and have its economy be strong in the future.
“So the momentum has swung back toward cities realizing that this is just not a good deal for them and seeing that their peers are coming to the same conclusion.”
Krakow, Poland, and Hamburg, bidding for 2022 and 2024, respectively, dropped out after referenda. Budapest, Hungary, dropped out in February after failing to gain political support for its 2024 bid.
Costs and questionable legacies are fueling the opposition. A study from Robert Baade and Victor Matheson in the Journal of
Economic Perspectives found that every Olympics from 1968 until 2012 cost more than originally estimated, with the median Games 150% over budget.
“I think the tide has shifted and it’s now very much pushing in the direction of this is a bad proposition to host the Olympic Games,” said Zimbalist, who, with Dempsey, wrote, No Boston Olympics: How and Why Smart Cities Are Passing on the Torch.
RAISING SOCIAL ISSUES Organizers of NOlympics LA have focused on social issues rather than financial arguments. The Olympics would place the federal government in charge of security, prompting concerns about the militarization of the police force.
Though Los Angeles’ bid does not require the construction of permanent venues, NOlympics LA organizers are concerned about displacement of residents and affordability of housing.
“We still fundamentally reject the idea that the Olympic Games — even if they are a ‘low-risk’ opportunity — aren’t going to have the unintended costs and consequences that are going to hurt people in low-income communities,” said Steve Ducey, an organizer with NOlympics LA.
The group held a NOlympics Day event Sunday, a response to Olympics Day on Friday.
Garcetti said the opposition to the bid was not discussed when the IOC’s evaluation commission visited in May.
“I think whenever there’s been individual conversations I’ve had with the grocery store or groups ... there’s a fundamental misunderstanding that there’s public money going into this,” he said. “They say, ‘ We should be spending that on paving the street or fixing homelessness’ or whatever that is.
“I think usually when they learn that this is not even possible because there is no city money put forward that usually takes care of that.”
An assessment from KPMG found L.A.’s $5.3 billion budget “substantially reasonable.”
report from California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office found “the low-risk financial strategy of the bid greatly reduces the risk that the Southern California economy will bear large, long-term taxpayer expenses related to the Games.”
While the bid is privately funded, it would require support from the city and state. Both have pledged $250 million should L.A. burn through its $491 million contingency fund.
“I think that the overwhelming odds are that this is not a good investment for a city to make, but there are exceptions that have various characteristics, and I think Los Angeles is one of them,” Zimbalist said.
It’s not clear yet how much traction NOlympics LA is getting. The 88% support of the bid comes from a Loyola Marymount poll conducted in early 2016. The opposition group had about 1,100 followers on Facebook and Twitter last week.
But NOlympics LA could see its role shifting to accountability for the Olympics as the IOC moves toward awarding an Olympics to both L.A. and Paris.
The IOC membership will vote next month on a recommendation from the executive board to award the 2024 and 2028 Games in September.
The dual award is a prudent choice, Dempsey and Zimbalist said. But it’s one brought by a crisis the IOC is facing.
IOC President Thomas Bach has noted a shift in attitudes among Western countries. Where there was support five years ago, now there is skepticism.
The IOC’s response is changes such as considering a dual award, plus others that would adjust bidding for 2026.
To Dempsey and Zimbalist, it’s not far enough.
“(The IOC) should understand the lack of interest is reflective of much deeper concerns and not just some anti-establishment broader global trends that have put them in a tough spot,” Dempsey said.
“It’s their own choices, historically, that have put them in a tough spot. They’re in a position to change that, and I think they would be better off ... and the host cities would be better off if they really did embrace that change.”