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Why Agenda 2020 Will Fail


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You can't pin that on Boston. Boston's model is still based on the old one--as Paris', Rome's and the other bids are. Only small tweaks are possible at this time.

Although presumably, now that Boston has tweaked itself out of the running, a USOC bid based more on Agenda 2020 becomes possible.

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Although presumably, now that Boston has tweaked itself out of the running, a USOC bid based more on Agenda 2020 becomes possible.

But regardless, 2024 looks like it's bound for Europe anyway -- so A2020 is just too soon to be put into effect fully... AND make a difference.

See developments and things like increased funding to the Paralympics from the IOC and the increase of Paralympics Games Winter 2022 from 750 athletes to 850, in link below. What I'm saying is that while A-2020 has been approved, putting it into action goes along at the same glacial speed most Olympic improvements happen, i.e., being implemented a quadrennial or 2 earlier -- but the blueprint with which the 2024 candidates must submit and are to be judged on...are still from the old template; and A-2020 tweaks just added along the way...and which may be the items to differentiate Paris from Hamburg; and which will make it easier for the delegates to make their decision in 2017.

http://www.olympic.org/news/executive-board-hears-of-further-progress-on-implementation-of-olympic-agenda-2020/246641

Edited by baron-pierreIV
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The best city is Paris everything is in place. Rome can’t afford it and the Italians don’t want the Olympics. Italy is in tough financial position. Toronto has no main stadium that’s a lot money. Let’s give it to Paris and this ordeal and waste of money is done. Boston mayor was smart he knew what the Host city contract demands were.

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With Boston out it shows that Agenda 2020 is a failure. What was the main reason COST! I hope the IOC took note of this.

The leadership that ran Boston's bid were incompetent. That's why their bid failed. Not because of Agenda 2020. They only have themselves (and the USOC for picking them) to blame. It's in no way an indictment against the IOC that a city that shouldn't have been at the forefront of an Olympic bid in the first place couldn't get their act together.

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  • 1 year later...

Well with only two cities it has shown that agenda 2020 is a failure, the IOC is totally lost! Now why bother until September, the IOC should call a special meeting and give not award one city 2024 and the other 2028. It is totally stupid to move forward with this, it is  now a joke! Some might disagree but I have been right in the past. The cost of the Olympics is still out of control.

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To be fair though, Agenda 2020 is/was in transition.  And of course, the 2 remaining candidates are the mega-cities that would like to show off that they can stage anything the IOC throws at them.  Agenda 2020 is for the newer, smaller cities, like Budapest would have been perfect, Durban, Madrid, maybe a San Francisco, St. Pete.  But if Lima goes 2024-2028, then all of that is out of the picture since the 2 cities have made their commitments; and perhaps Durban will benefit if they can get their sh*t together.  

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Olympic bidding process has become "toxic", former IOC marketing director says

Some really interesting comments from Mike Payne in this, pretty well nailing on the head what I;ve said for a while, that the biggest problem the IOC is having difficulties coming to grips with is social media fuelling the anti-games movements, and also how the toxic legacy of Sochi is again as much a fault of poor communication as over-gran dose spending (I've always thought the $50 billion tag was overblown, but like much anti-Olympic criticism, it sticks).

It's just getting to be a big societal problem - not just for the IOC but for the world and national governments as we've seen with Brexit and Trump's election. Social media is just fuelling anti-establishment and dissatisfaction rhetoric, and calmer, rational and moderate voices are just struggling to come to grips as to how to get heard and accepted above the clamour of the ultimate anti-nimby, alternative facts tool.

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Op Ed: A New Bidding Strategy for the Olympic Games
04/20/17

In my previous blog, I said that the lack of a long-term strategy and vision has blinkered the IOC in its ability to anticipate the current dearth of viable host cities for the Olympic Games. We should have seen this crisis looming some 10 years ago.

It is not just an issue around the quantity of potential host cities, but also of the quality of these candidates. Although the IOC would not admit it publicly, we have seen a great many candidate cities where the Olympic Games governing body would very much prefer not to host its flagship event. These sorts of candidates should simply be avoided at all costs.

So what can we do to remedy the situation in the future?

There is one obvious element that needs rethinking: the current bidding system for cities vying to host the Olympic Games is totally outdated and must simply be torn up and discarded.

The bidding system possibly made sense during the latter half of last century, but it is simply no longer fit for purpose.

With fewer and fewer cities prepared even to consider hosting sport’s flagship event, the IOC needs to find another selection system as quickly as possible.

So here is my view: there should no longer be an ‘open tender’ system, in which any country with an NOC can put forward a city as a potential Olympic host. Instead, the IOC should take the initiative itself and proactively contact suitable host cities, or countries. Once a shortlist is drawn up, the final selection of city should be based on pure rationale, instead of the existing voting system by the 115 Members whose choices are often ‘colored’ by other (often political) motives.

I would recommend the following methodology for selecting future host cities:

1. The IOC should approach a small number of carefully-selected countries to ask whether they would be open to organizing the Olympic Games. It would then draw up a shortlist of two (or maximum three) countries, in order of preference, where it would like to see the Olympics held. The IOC would then negotiate with the first country on its list and, if agreement is not reached, only then open negotiations with the second country. To ensure success, the IOC must also be prepared to make the Host City Contract much, much less onerous. I must say that I have never seen any other contract that is so skewed towards one party (the IOC), something that also makes it a product of a bygone age.

2. A fundamental condition of hosting must be that a country can organize the Games without making taxpayers fund the investment for additional infrastructure. The only infrastructure investments that would be allowed would be those which would be made anyway, irrespective of hosting the Olympics. The only costs taken on by a host country’s government, therefore, would be those relating to security (which could be kept to a minimum by using the army, as happened at London 2012).

3. The new bidding system must also allow scope for an applicant country’s corporations to be far more involved in the delivery of the Games, both commercially as well as in the organisation process itself. This can easily be done without jeopardizing or changing our TOP Sponsor program.

4. Because the IOC is integrally involved in the negotiations and final choice of host city, it must also assume greater responsibility for the organization of the Games. Some tasks that are today blithely passed over to the OCOG would better be organized by the IOC itself. That is logical: the IOC is deeply involved in every Games and so can make the best use of its accumulated know-how.


The current bidding crisis is summed up for me by the case of Switzerland. This is the winter country par excellence: Alpine tourism was born here. How is it possible that the country that is home to the IOC itself and which has every possible asset to organize a fantastic Winter Games has not played host since 1948? Proposals for a Swiss Winter Games have been made time and again, but most of the time they have prompted a negative reaction from the Swiss population, mainly because of the perceived high costs.

Last week, the Swiss city of Sion confirmed that it will bid for the Winter Games of 2026. In the bidding system I outline above, I would encourage the IOC to seize the initiative by approaching and negotiating with the Swiss government, the canton of Valais and the city itself – thereby reassuring the Swiss taxpayers – and this time I hope not letting the opportunity slip away yet again. A spectacular and successful Winter Games in Switzerland in 2026 would be both a huge boost for winter sports as well as for the IOC.

Lastly, I totally understand that my proposed new system would mean taking away from IOC members the privilege of choosing where to host the Games. But they can surely understand that if nothing is done to resolve the current crisis, then a time will come soon when they simply do not have any bids to choose from.

Written by Hein Verbruggen, honorary IOC Member and former President of the UCI (International Cycling Union).

Source: Around the rings

 

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23 hours ago, world atlas said:

[Quote:]

" The only infrastructure investments that would be allowed would be those which would be made anyway "

And therein lies a basic problem. That would appear to rule out something ilke Ken Livingstone's ingenious plot to bring the Olympics to East London specifically to provide an excuse for infrastructure developments that would have happened anyway if he had his way, but in normal circumstances would have become hopelessly mired in stalemated negotiations about a million details.

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8 hours ago, JMarkSnow2012 said:

And therein lies a basic problem. That would appear to rule out something ilke Ken Livingstone's ingenious plot to bring the Olympics to East London specifically to provide an excuse for infrastructure developments that would have happened anyway if he had his way, but in normal circumstances would have become hopelessly mired in stalemated negotiations about a million details.

I agree. It was also one of the few of Verbruggen's suggestions I disagreed with. Olympic-specific or prompted investment and improvements need not be burdens or blights, and the games can indeed be a spur for worthwhile projects. As many have noted, it's not Olympic investment that is a problem per se, but wasteful or extravagant Olympic spending. There's just as many examples of good Olympic planning and planning as there are bad, but it's of course the negative case studies that get the bulk of the attention in the media and popular thought.

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Bach: 'Good Old Times' of Olympic Bidding Over
Written by Kevin Nutley
04/25/17

(ATR) International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach admits it is time to rethink how cities bid to host the Olympic Games.

With Los Angeles and Paris the only two cities remaining in the 2024 Olympic bid race, Bach says the IOC needs to stop fueling the opponents of the Games with an outdated bidding procedure.

“We have to acknowledge our candidature procedure as it is now is giving arguments to these people,” Bach told delegates at the opening of the Pan American Sports Organization general assembly in Uruguay. “It is giving the argument that it is too expensive and too complicated [to bid].”

“This results in the fact that the good old times are over in regards to the candidature procedure,” the IOC president admits. “We cannot expect a city to take the same approach as they used to approach it in the past.”

Bach detailed how cities in the past would bid to host the Olympics multiple cycles in a row, particularly European cities. Istanbul, Turkey has put forth bids for five of the past seven Summer Olympic cycles and Madrid, Spain bid unsuccessfully for three Games from 2012-2020. 

Now, more and more cities are holding referendums on their Olympic bids, often ending projects before they start or as late as the final bidding stage as exemplified in the 2024 race with Budapest, Hungary. The 2024 race alone has withstood the loss of four cities either due to the threat or actualization of an Olympics referendum or lack of public support. 

“Today, hardly any Mayor or political authority in a city or a country can go to their population and say ‘let’s try again’,” Bach says. “They ask – ‘we have just spent so many millions on the candidature, we have to spend it again to get back and maybe this time we’ll do better and win?’

“This in today’s world is not possible anymore,” Bach emphasizes. “We have to look into our candidature procedure to make it less expensive, make it more efficient and to streamline it more to make it more accessible.”

Bach says the IOC must make changes soon with the start of the 2026 Winter Olympic bidding race fast approaching. Bach has tasked the four IOC vice presidents with producing proposals to change the bidding procedure before the 2024 candidates are briefed by the IOC in Lausanne this July.

“If they should come up with some ideas, we can discuss on this occasion and make further steps with regard to candidatures,” Bach said before asking the delegates of PASO if they had any ideas or a ‘golden rule’ to improve the process. 

The IOC also acknowledges it is lucky to retain the rock solid bids of Los Angeles and Paris for 2024. The bids are so strong that the IOC is having a hard time coming to grips with denying one of them the right to host the Olympics. This has led to the formation of a working group studying the possibility of letting the loser of 2024 host the Games in 2028, eliminating the need for another complicated bidding procedure.

“We are confident today whoever is elected it will be [a] great Games,” Bach says. “But if we were so complacent we would not be in sports. In sports you have to have ambition and we have to look into this situation and see how we can best explore this opportunity with these two great cities and what could be done in this respect.”

Neither Los Angeles nor Paris bid leaders have admitted they are willing to stage the 2028 edition of the Games with each insisting its 2024 or bust.

The IOC Evaluation Commission will visit the two cities in May before the candidate city briefing in July. IOC members will then vote for the 2024 host city at the IOC Session in Lima, Peru on Sep. 13. 

Around the rings

 

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