GEOPOLITICS

Escalating costs, accusations of wasteful infrastructural spending and growing demographic opposition have all played a big role in the drop in the number of cities opting to bid to become an Olympic host city. From a longlist of nine bidding cities for 2012, the bidding process for 2024 ultimately had just two candidates, after the very public withdrawals of Rome, Budapest and Hamburg. With just Paris and Los Angeles left in the running, a deal was struck to enable the pair to each host one of the next two Summer Games, in 2024 and 2028. The IOC was clearly running out of options. ‘The IOC has become more and more desperate over the last few years that so few citizens in the North and West have been willing to host the Olympics,’ says Flyvbjerg. ‘They are happy to have emerging economies host of course, which they should be. But they’re not happy if only emerging economies or, even worse, emerging totalitarian regimes, are willing to be the host. That doesn’t look good and the IOC knows that.’ As with others sports, from football to Formula 1, this high-budget, high-pressure situation has opened the door for political regimes with deep pockets and minimal domestic opposition to put their cities forwards as potential hosts. For example, when political and/or public opposition in Oslo, Stockholm, Krakow, Lviv and others saw each city opt against bidding to host the 2022 Winter Games, the IOC ultimately had to choose between Almaty, capital of Kazakhstan, and the eventual winner, Beijing. ‘You ended up with two cities – one with no experience and another one with limited snow and human rights concerns, which didn’t really give the IOC much choice,’ says Essex. There have already been not-insignificant discussions about boycotting the Beijing 2022 Games, including by prominent US politicians, reflecting international opposition to various aspects of China’s behaviour, not least its abusive treatment of the minority Uyghur population. It does beg the question why China and Russia, for example, are so keen for cities such as Beijing and Sochi to pop up in the Olympic calendar, given all of the attention and scrutiny that comes with being a host city. ‘The intention of hosting is to re-socialise others towards a more positive image of your country,’ explains Jonathan Grix, professor of sport policy and politics at Manchester Metropolitan University. ‘The example of the [2008] Beijing Games is instructive in indicating the risks involved in hosting sports mega-events when the state suffers from a poor image based on the past, poor human rights or undemocratic governance.’ He points to the Tibet-related protests in Paris that accompanied the Olympic torch relay on its journey to Beijing 2008 – scenes that made headlines around the world. ‘That said, the reaction of the Chinese public to the French protests also illustrates the success of the Olympics in building Chinese nationalism,’ he argues. ‘The Beijing Olympics could thus be seen as part of a nation-building strategy that combines positive nationalism domestically with a higher profile externally. The precise measurement of the impact of such a dual strategy – which included investing billions of dollars in a soft-power strategy - is difficult to measure.’