IOC paves way for L.A., Paris to be host cities
For months, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach has opined about a bidding process that “produces too many losers.”
It has been the motivation for his push to award the 2024 and 2028 Olympics simultaneously to Los Angeles and Paris, an option that moved closer to reality with a vote by the IOC on Tuesday.
As IOC members praised the cities’ bids, it was clear that part of the motivation to adopt Bach’s plan was a recognition that the organization can count itself among those losing in the bid process. Its decision to try to reach a tripartite agreement with Los Angeles and Paris for the 2024 and 2028 Games, one reached by unanimous vote of its members at SwissTech Convention Center, is one made as much out of luxury as it is out of necessity.
Seldom has the IOC had two better bids, yet in recent years it has seen cities opting out of hosting the Games.
“My guess is that if they had a waiting list of 10 candidate cities, you probably wouldn’t consider it because you’re trying to move things around and get good bids from all over the world,” Canadian IOC member Dick Pound said of the bidding process for 2028.
To be sure, the quality of the bids Los Angeles and Paris put forward was a driving factor in the decision. With bids that rely heavily on existing infrastructure and venues, Los Angeles and Paris provide a lower-risk proposition than the IOC has had in recent memory.
The IOC’s evaluation commission called both “outstanding ” in a report it released last week, saying both had financial risks that are low for this stage of planning. IOC members praised the pres- entations each bid made Tuesday.
They will have to work with the IOC to decide on which city will take 2024 and which will take 2028, but Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said they felt like they could reach an agreement.
That would leave the IOC with its Summer Olympics secure for more than a decade.
And it would give it time to consider a bidding process facing challenges.
In contests for 2022 and 2024, eight cities have pulled out of the bidding process — thanks largely to opposition or lack of political support — while four have remained to the vote.
“I think it’s a totally rational choice, frankly, from their part, to de-risk that and not have to go through the embarrassment of another bidding process in 2028 where they may get few cities or less desirable cities,” said Chris Dempsey, who was co-chair of No Boston Olympics, a group whose opposition helped sink that bid.
Part of that is because challenges in bidding are largely European. Budapest, Hungary; Hamburg; Rome; Krakow, Poland; and Oslo have been among eight cities to abandon plans for a bid, with some pulling out late in the process.
Hidalgo acknowledged the challenges in Europe, saying it drove Paris’ efforts to get support for its bid.
“Many colleagues that have been in the starting blocks for a bid for 2024 had to give up after a referendum,” she said.
With the next three Olympics in Asia and South America unlikely to get a bid in the near future after the issues in Rio, the IOC needs to rebuild confidence in Europe, said John MacAloon, a professor at the University of Chicago who was involved in bids for New York and Chicago.
The IOC’s thinking would be “Let’s have a successful Games in Europe and try to win the continent back,” MacAloon said. “Nobody needs to win America back in the same way.”
Bach acknowledged the issues in bidding in his opening statement to the session. The IOC faces the external challenge of populist movements and internal challenge of a candidature procedure that “has become too expensive and too onerous” for some cities, he said.
“We have given some arguments to this public skepticism and mistrust,” Bach said.
In addition to the vote on the Summer Olympics, the IOC unanimously approved changes to the bidding process for the 2026 Winter Olympics that extended the invitation phase, shortened the candidature phase and offered more support from the IOC.
The Winter Games also face difficulty in a limited number of locations fit to host them, so the IOC hopes the changes welcome back bids from the Americas, Europe or Asia, Bach said.
Those changes, coupled with the possibility of securing hosts for 2024 and 2028, are ones Bach and the IOC hope can start producing more winners.
“This would also have the side effect or windfall profit that we could take our time to look into the further procedure and adapting to the time,” he said. “Maybe then again we have 10 cities knocking on our door.”