Has the Olympic Games bidding reached a dead end?
What do we know so far, is it transparent or a genius stroke?
So the IOC (International Olympic Committee) awarded the 2032 games to Australia by-passing the bidding process.
Wise-decision! let me break it down
The Olympic candidate process is one of the most expensive processes in the modern sporting world.
The process technically includes 2 macro stages
1. The Invitation Phase (not a formal commitment to bid)
2. The Candidature Process (a formal commitment to bid)
* Stage 1: Vision, Games concept and Strategy
* Stage 2: Governance, Legal and Venue Funding
* Stage 3: Games Delivery, Experience & Venue Legacy
Every 7 years many countries which aspire to host Olympic games spend millions of taxpayers $s to build their bids.
These bidding countries then spend months meeting IOC members promoting their bids; in simple words lobbying for the win.
The IOC members then vote to choose the host of the Olympic games.
So who gains and who loses in this process?
The answer is IOC wins in all scenarios
The bid consultants, PR agencies and lobbyist wins
but the Taxpayers of the losing countries bids suffers the loss.
Everyone remembers IOC’s decision to award 2024 to Paris and 2028 games to LA, this decision was best in terms of securing host cities without being worried about the uncertainty of incoming bids.
This experience gave IOC the comfort of thought that games would be held in a country that is considered financial and politically stable. They didn’t want to change something which worked well in past and hence awarded it to Australia, which is already a sporting nation which means they will not have to spend on building new infrastructure, which is a good thing.
So how will the Olympic sport grow in the other part of the world?
I will let their PR department to answer this question, if you have the answer please share in the comments section, I would love to share in the part -2 of the post.