Why have dramatic bidding contests to host major sporting events stopped?

New York Times

22-04-2025

Reeling off things that used to be better in the 'good old days' is a fine way to start an argument: music, television, social media… It is a long and contentious list. But surely nobody can dispute that bidding races for major sports events have gone to the dogs.
Without meaning to sound like my father, when I was a lad, the contests to host Olympics or World Cups were almost as exciting as the events themselves.
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In 2005, we had wild celebrations in the room in Singapore and back in Trafalgar Square when London beat Paris for the right to host the 2012 Olympics. Four years later, there was shock in Copenhagen when Rio beat Madrid, Tokyo and Chicago, including its cheerleader-in-chief, new U.S. President Barack Obama, in the race for the 2016 Games. And then, in 2010, there was the ultimate needle-scratch moment when FIFA impresario Sepp Blatter surprised even himself by saying the World Cup circus was heading to Qatar in 2022.
These were moments of genuine jeopardy that left millions elated and even more deflated. The decisions were made live on news channels, topped bulletins and were splashed over front pages. For politicians, it was as close as they would get to lifting a trophy, and for sports fans it was like winning a backstage pass to their favourite show. Or, if you are an England football supporter, they were regular reminders of just how unpopular we are around the world — character-building stuff.
Compare that to what we have now.
Hands up, who remembers how Brisbane 'won' the right to stage the 2032 Olympics or even knew the decision had been made?
If that one passed you by, I suspect you missed the emails about the 2030 Winter Olympics going back to the French Alps and the 2034 edition returning to Salt Lake City. No rivals, no rows about gifts, no fireworks back home.
What do you recall of the 'race' to host the 2030 and 2034 men's World Cups? Was it months of intrigue, lobbying and speculation, or the news dribbling out in a press release, with the 'vote' conducted by a round of applause on a video conference call?
At least there was a press release ready for those decisions. Current FIFA supremo Gianni Infantino's disdain for bidding wars reached a new low in Belgrade this month when he casually mentioned that the hosts for the 2031 and 2035 Women's World Cups had been decided.
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'We have started the bidding process, as you know, for the Women's World Cups in '31 and '35… and today I can confirm that we have received one bid for '31 and one valid bid, I should add, for '35,' said Infantino, without a hint of suspense.
'The '31 bid is from the United States of America and potentially some other CONCACAF members together, and the '35 bid is from Europe, from the Home Nations. So, the path is there for the Women's World Cup to be taking place in some great countries to boost even more the women's football movement.'
His munificence took the FIFA media department by surprise. An email to confirm what those of us in the room thought we had heard did not follow for 24 hours. Presumably, they had to check the tape, too.
He was not even speaking at his own event. Infantino's speech was at the UEFA Congress. It also followed his long plug for this summer's Club World Cup, another contract he handed to a sole bidder without a competitive tender.
To be fair, the hosts of the previous three Women's World Cups to be awarded have all been decided after competitive contests that started with large fields of candidates but became two-horse races. The battle for the 2027 tournament was even pretty close, with Brazil beating a joint bid from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands by 119 votes to 78 at the FIFA Congress in Bangkok last year.
But the most recent tightly contested races for men's World Cups took place in 2000 and 2004, when, respectively, Germany beat South Africa by a single (and possibly corrupt) vote and South Africa bounced back to defeat Morocco 14-10.
The 2014 World Cup was handed to Brazil unopposed. The contests for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were amazing in terms of drama but they also led to the near-collapse of FIFA. Perhaps deciding that too much jeopardy is bad for business, FIFA played it safe in 2018 when Canada, Mexico and the U.S. won the right to host the 2026 tournament at a canter over Morocco. Well, it seemed safe at the time.
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That choice did go to a vote, though, whereas the 2030 (Morocco, Portugal, Spain) and 2034 (Saudi Arabia) selections were coronations.
It has been a similar story at the IOC, where in 2013 Tokyo comfortably won the right to host the 2020 Games, before the fields assembled for the 2024 Summer Games and 2026 Winter Games evaporated, forcing Olympic boss Thomas Bach to dish out three Games at once: Paris 2024, Milan 2026 and LA 2028, all unopposed.
UEFA, too, has dispensed with difficult choices. After Germany beat Turkey for the right to stage Euro 2024, European football's governing body opted for an IOC-style, prizes-for-everyone approach in 2023 when it gave Euro 2028 to the UK and Ireland, and 2032 to Italy and Turkey.
And it is not just football. Ever since 2014, when Doha, Qatar's capital, shocked Eugene, Oregon, to win the right to host the 2019 World Athletics Championships, World Athletics has just picked the candidate that ticks the most boxes.
The Rugby World Cup used to be good for a decent scrap, but Australia was unopposed for the 2027 edition and nobody was going to stand in the way of progress when USA Rugby said it wanted to host the 2031 tournament. And we have not had a proper fight to host a Cricket World Cup since 2006, when India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh ganged up to beat Australia and New Zealand to the 2011 edition.
So, is democracy dead?
'The history of bidding races is a story of peaks and troughs,' says Dr Heather Dichter, a specialist in sport history at Leicester's De Montfort University. 'If we look at the Olympics, the bidding contests ramped up during the 1950s and 1960s as cities and national governments realised there were potential benefits to staging a Games. That cycle really peaked with the race for the 1968 Summer Games, which was decided in 1963 in the German spa town of Baden Baden.
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'On paper, it was a four-way race between Detroit, Mexico City, Lyon and Buenos Aires, but it was only really between those first three, as Buenos Aires didn't have a chance, and they went all-out for it. They brought huge teams to Baden Baden — it's a nice place, after all — and were allowed to create huge rooms that showcased their bids.
'Detroit leaned into the city's industrial power and it was really hi-tech, while Mexico City went for an Aztec theme. Lyon created a mini Versailles and had a famous French chef making food. And even before the vote there had been lots of debate about Mexico City bringing IOC members over on all-expenses-paid trips.
'So, after the vote, which was pretty close, there was a feeling within the Olympic movement that bidding races had got too big and political, and it was time to dampen things down a bit.'
For those who cannot remember if Detroit has hosted an Olympics or not, the Motor City came up short in Germany, just as it did the previous seven times it bid and would do so again when it threw its hat into the ring for a ninth time four years later.
'That didn't really work, as bidders carried on going all-out for a few more years,' Dichter continues. 'But things changed in the 1970s, when the interest dropped away, particularly after the Games in Munich and Montreal, which were dominated by terrorism, boycotts and overspending.
'So, Los Angeles was unopposed when it bid for the 1984 Games. But then the wheel turned again, because the LA was a financial hit and cities around the world thought: 'Yeah, we'll have some of that'. But that, of course, led to more corruption and the infamous vote-buying scandal of the Salt Lake City bid. So the IOC tightened things up again.'
Yes, it would be fair to say that things had got a little loose heading into the 1995 vote to decide where the 2002 Winter Games should go. Having lost previous races in suspicious circumstances, Utah's capital spent millions of dollars on gifts, land, donations and even school fees for the IOC's voters. When the scandal broke three years later, the IOC stopped members from accepting free trips to bidding cities, brought in price caps for presents and introduced term limits.
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But bidding races did not dry up because they stopped being fun for the voters.
'It has been concerns over the costs of bidding and staging the events themselves that have seen the number of bids drop off,' says Dichter.
Angus Buchanan is the co-founder and chief executive of The Sports Consultancy, a London-based firm that advises cities, countries and federations on how to win major events and run bidding processes.
'Let's think back to 2015 and 2017, when there were six bids for the 2022 Winters and five bids for the 2024 Summer Games,' says Buchanan.
'All but Almaty and Beijing dropped out for the 2022 vote and everyone apart from LA and Paris fell away in 2017. When you have these small bidding fields there is an extreme risk of awkwardness and embarrassment.'
Of the two, it is hard to know which contest had a higher cringe factor.
Nearly 20 cities and regions initially expressed an interest in staging the 2022 Winter Games, but that crystallised into six seemingly solid bids: Almaty, Beijing, Krakow, Lviv, Oslo and Stockholm. But then Krakow and Lviv decided they could not afford it and the Swedish government realised their public was against it.
That was embarrassing, but not as bad as Oslo's last-minute exit following a collapse in local support for the bid. The final straw was the publication of the IOC's 7,000-page list of demands on a host, which includes serious stuff like tax breaks and VIP lanes on highways, and diva-like nonsense such as being greeted by smiles at hotels, Olympic-themed furniture and the air conditioning set at 68 degrees.
The IOC did not immediately learn from this PR disaster. The five bids for the 2024 Games — Budapest, Hamburg, LA, Paris and Rome — became two when public referenda and protest movements knocked out Budapest, Hamburg and Rome (an earlier local campaign had stopped Boston from even reaching the start line).
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It was at this point IOC boss Bach decided he could not risk upsetting anyone and gave 2024 to Paris and 2028 to LA.
'The world had still not fully recovered from the (2008) financial crash and much of the West was struggling with large debts,' explains Buchanan. 'These two bidding races caused a lot of introspection at the IOC, which decided it needed to create a much more responsible bidding process.'
The result of that introspection was the 2019 creation of the Future Host Commission, a small group of IOC members whose job it is now to hold non-committal 'continuous dialogue' with interested cities and regions, before moving to 'targeted dialogue' with one or more preferred candidates. The idea is that all this chatting produces one unanimous candidate, without anyone losing face or wasting public money on bid books, architects' models of venues or teaser videos.
'The criticism, however, is that you lose a lot of transparency and the decision-making process is entirely opaque,' says Dichter.
Bidding races are also great adverts for your event because they create a steady stream of stories in the years between the sporty bits. FIFA, however, has gone in the same direction as the IOC, although there has always been less jeopardy with World Cup hosting decisions because FIFA's continental rotation policy has meant we have always had a general idea of where each tournament would go.
For decades, that rotation was simple — South America, Europe, South America, Europe — but South America's turn started to be shared with the rest of the Americas and then the World Cup went genuinely global with the 2002 World Cup in East Asia then South Africa in 2010.
But it is not just FIFA's worldview that has expanded; the tournament has grown, too. Having been a 16-team affair for five decades, it expanded to 24 teams in 1982 and then 32 in 1998. There will be 48 teams at next year's World Cup in North America, which means 104 games across 39 days in 16 venues, and some would like to increase that to 64 teams in 2030.
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'As the World Cups have got bigger, the potential field of candidates has got smaller, which is why we are seeing more joint bids,' says Buchanan.
'And that has led to the need for more curation of these bids by FIFA at the beginning of the process. What we have ended up with is a more formal rotation policy, with more calculated thinking about where the tournament should go.'
Calculated thinking is one way of putting it; Bonita Mersiades, a senior member of Australia's ill-fated bid for the 2022 World Cup, has another.
'The shift away from competitive bidding towards these 'strategic partnerships' is part of the centralisation of power under Infantino,' says Mersiades, who wrote a book about her experiences on the World Cup campaign trail in 2018.
'While it might reduce the risk of corruption scandals, we continue to miss out on transparency and accountability, while awarding the world's biggest sporting event based on merit continues to be elusive.
'These stage-managed announcements give the impression of inevitability, not excitement. They also cut the legs out from under smaller nations or joint bids with real vision but less political clout. True competition requires imagination and diversity, on and off the field.'
John Zerafa, who has consulted on more bidding campaigns than he can probably remember, does not see it in quite those terms. But he agrees that decision-making at FIFA and the IOC has become centralised around their powerful leaders.
'Over the past decade, Bach and Infantino have taken a hands-on approach in overseeing the awarding of their flagship events,' the veteran bid strategist explains. 'The by-product of their influence over this process has, essentially, limited the number of nations and cities bidding.
'Both organisations, rightly, are also stipulating the use of existing infrastructure. But, of course, not every country has what's needed to host a mega sporting event. So this also limits your bidding pool, and with mega events such as the World Cup expanding in scale, infrastructure pressures on host nations have also grown.
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'And then we have economic pressures, especially post-Covid, where many governments are carrying historic debt levels. Add on the reality that voters, dealing with cost of living challenges, are less likely to support their politicians underwriting a multi-billion-dollar sports event that lasts just a few weeks and you can see why there are fewer nations putting their hat in the ring to host these events.'
Is that that, then? No more media junkets to sample local wares or see new stadiums?
'I think there is greater interest in bidding for the big sports events now than we've seen for two decades,' says Buchanan. 'When we speak to the people we work with on bids, we certainly hear that they think it's to the detriment of the bid when there is no competitive tension. A competitive process makes you focus on the bidding criteria and come up with innovative solutions to the problems they pose.
'There was certainly a period when both FIFA and the IOC wanted their hosts to build lots of shiny new temples to celebrate sport, and a willingness to do that was what swayed the voters as opposed to any consideration of whether these new temples would have any practical long-term benefits for the hosts. There was very little thought given to sustainability.
'But that changed at the IOC with Thomas Bach's Agenda 2020 (a set of bidding-process reforms introduced in 2014) and FIFA has also become more attuned to arguments about sustainability and legacy.'
You are saying there is a chance on the junkets, then?
'One of the most obvious consequences of Agenda 2020 was that it marginalised the membership — there was just much less for them to vote on because all the big decisions were wrapped up in Bach's targeted dialogues with potential bidders,' Buchanan continues. 'So, it will be interesting to see what new IOC president Kirsty Coventry does, but I expect we will see more democratic processes in the future.'
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Coventry, a double Olympic swimming champion from Zimbabwe, was elected to the role last month. The victory made her, at 41, the youngest IOC president for more than a century, the movement's first female leader and the first to come from Africa.
That sounds like she should be a breath of fresh air. But she was also Bach's preferred successor, so many saw her as the continuity candidate.
When The Athletic spoke to Coventry in the run-up to the election, she praised the work of the Future Hosting Commission but noted that there was no shortage of candidates, from around the globe, lining up for runs at the 2036 and 2040 Games.
Asked if she could imagine the IOC awarding two Games at once again, as it did in 2017, Coventry said: 'There are pros and cons.'
Dichter is encouraged by Coventry's appointment: 'With a new IOC president coming in and a good field assembling for 2036, I'm confident we're going to see more transparency in how the Games are awarded,' she says. 'But I'm less confident we're going to get more transparency from FIFA because it's never really been very transparent and the policy of continental rotation will continue to limit the fields.'
Dichter's doubts would appear to be well-grounded.
'To be honest with you, from a strategy point of view, whether it's UEFA or CONCACAF or Asia, they make decisions based on what's best for the confederation,' said CONCACAF boss Victor Montagliani at the Financial Times' Business of Football Summit in February.
'Moving forward, FIFA needs to relook at it, because spending a lot of money on a bid is maybe not the best use of your money. It has to be more strategic and I think this is part of that philosophy of ensuring that (the World Cup) moves around the world.
'So, 2038, I don't know what's next but by having it in the Americas (in 2026), then in Europe and Africa (in 2030), Asia (in 2034), and then continuing that circle, I think it's a better way to do it. Because the craziness of having everybody bid, and all the craziness that went with it, is probably, from a risk-management standpoint, not the best thing to do.'
But the craziness was fun, Victor. We miss the craziness. And maybe the craziness created better outcomes. Just a thought.