Best technical bid? Best overall bid?

[venuedesignlover]

What are some of the best technical bids? What are some of the best overall bids? Is there much discrepancy between the two? What factors, other than technical factors, can raise the profile of the overall bid and cause this discrepancy? I’ve been busy with work/family stuff for the past couple of weeks and have not been able to be as active as I hoped.

[Sir Rols]

Hmmmm...

IMO, that’s a pretty loaded (and, again, subjective) question. And one that’s been debated heatedly over every bid cycle there’s been whole GamesBids has existed.

Technical bid? Surely it depends a lot on what has been devised to work best for any individual city. Is it better centralised? Or is it better to spread out and make use of existing or significant assets? Is it better to build new facilities? Or to used existing infrastructure? Ultimately, the answer is probably whichever bid has ever got the best IOC evaluation technical score?

And best bid overall?  Is it the bid plan and bid book? Or is it how effectively it was marketed and gained support? Surely the “best bid” in any cycle is the one that wins. After all, that’s the whole purpose of a bid, to win. 

[Sir Rols]

IMO, the best two overall bids were the ones that used carefully crafted and highly targeted strategic planning to win their very competitive and tight bid races - Sydney and London.

[Rob2012]

On 6/3/2024 at 2:00 AM, Sir Rols said:

IMO, the best two overall bids were the ones that used carefully crafted and highly targeted strategic planning to win their very competitive and tight bid races - Sydney and London.

Was Sydney also the best technical bid in that field? It was arguable London was only third, behind both Paris and Madrid (I think it scored third in the IOC's evaluation iirc).

I'm using 'technical' to mean having their ducks all lined up, even if things were yet to be built. I feel like for e.g. London's Olympic Park was much more last minute whereas Sydney had lined up homebush for a long while before.

Edited June 5, 2024 by Rob2012

[TorchbearerSydney]

Sydney was rated the best technical bid......Of course it was Australia's 3rd bid in a row, so I imagine Australia knew how to play the game very well by then!

[Sir Rols]

10 hours ago, Rob2012 said:

Was Sydney also the best technical bid in that field? It was arguable London was only third, behind both Paris and Madrid (I think it scored third in the IOC's evaluation iirc).

I'm using 'technical' to mean having their ducks all lined up, even if things were yet to be built. I feel like for e.g. London's Olympic Park was much more last minute whereas Sydney had lined up homebush for a long while before.

I guess my answer just reflected my personal interests - I’ve never been that fascinated by the technical aspects of bid plans - I’ve never been one to pore over bid books to see who’s proposed aquatic centre as 500m closer to the main stadium than the others and so on. To me, a solid technical plan was always a pre-requisite, but rarely (if ever) the clincher - as we’ve always pondered and discussed here (and as GBMod Rob used to factor into his Bid Index algorithm), so many other things like politics, continental rotation, personal ties and influence, always factored in large.

When I talk about a bid, to me the interesting part is the strategies employed by the likes of Rod McGeoch in 1993 or Mike Lee in 2005 to win over that all important 50 per cent vote of the IOC - the marketing they used, strategles employed, networking and relationships they cultivated, alliances cultivated etc. Maybe because they’re the two I followed most closely, and both documented their campaigns so well in their respective books, but I still stand that they were the two best bid campaigns by far, particularly because they clinched their wins in such tight contests.

Edited June 5, 2024 by Sir Rols

[venuedesignlover]

4 hours ago, Sir Rols said:

the marketing they used

Can you elaborate?

[Sir Rols]

On 6/6/2024 at 1:46 PM, venuedesignlover said:

Can you elaborate?

I guess marketing was the wrong word. I was meaning more the lobbying directed towards the 100 or so individual IOC members to get their votes. Both the campaigns employed very sophisticated, very targetted strategies to win as many votes as they could. There’s really too much involved in those to give a potted run-down - you could write whole books about them. And indeed, there have been. I highly recommend you read “The Bid” by Rod McGeough and “The Race for the 2012 Olympics” by Mike Lee to get fascinating, insiders’ views on those races and what it took to win a tight bid race in those days of the “old norm”.

[sebastien1214]

I would have really liked to see what the race between Paris and LA would have been like for 2024, if the 24-28 solution had not been chosen (which, by the way, is for me the last good idea from the IOC). And I think that in any case, the era of these races, of these real competitions between cities, is unfortunately behind us.

[FYI]

Oh, but there indeed was 'a race' for 2024 between Paris & L.A. (along with Rome, Hamburg & Budapest, before all those three ultimately withdrew). The IOC had not chosen on the "double" until very late in the game, when only Paris & L.A. were the only ones left standing in the 2024 bid campaign. And there was actually further debate on here on whether or not the IOC was actually going to do it at all when speculation about it had emerged early in 2017, since the main argument was, that the IOC can't just change the rules right in the middle of a bid race, & what does that mean for the other parties that might be interested in 2028 later on. 

And there was one 'member' on here in particular from L.A. who was always putting L.A. on a grand pedestal, as if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, while at the same time always disparaging Paris every chance they could get, no matter how much compelling arguments anyone else made about Paris. It was always the rah-rah, everything is so great & wonderful with the L.A. 2024 bid & it would "save the Olympics once again" argument, while everything Paris was "so bad".  And even when the double was looking more & more likely the closer it got to the Lima session in Sept. 2017, they still went all out on how L.A. should still go "first" in 2024, & that Paris should get 2028 instead lol. Needless to say, in the end, they just had to eat their L.A. grandstanding 2024 words! 

[sebastien1214]

It’s true that there was indeed this race. Let's say, to be more precise, that I would have been curious to see the end of this race; I mean, it's often at the end of a race that the final podium is decided. From what I was able to read in the French press, at the time the 24-28 decision was validated, the advantage was for Paris; but I am not necessarily convinced that Paris would have had, on the day of the vote, a 100% chance of winning.

For the rest... LA 28 made the best possible choice by accepting 2028, just look at all the sponsors they have already had (and there are 4 years left!). In addition, was there financial compensation from the IOC for LA to agree to postpone to 2028? I thought I read that. In short, the best possible deal for a country that wants to organize profitable games.

[FYI]

I don't think any bid really, at the time of the "old norm", had a 100% of winning. However, the general consensus at the time, was that 2024 was Paris' to lose (even at the very beginning of the campaign, if one wasn't from one of the other bidding cities, that is). Cause yes, Paris had many advantages in it's favor, & I still believe the City of Lights would've came out victorious in a direct head-to-head 2024 IOC vote against L.A.

For one, the unofficial continental rotation was on it's side, since Europe had never gone more than 12 years without a Summer Olympics at that point. It was Paris' third bid in 16 years, & coming back after being narrowly defeated by London for 2012 (although, because of that, I can understand how some of the French may have been nervous about 2024 at the time). The only ones that really didn't believe in Paris' 2024 chances were basically the L.A. cheerleaders (& again, anyone from one of the other three bid cities before they withdrew). There was also some L.A. sports writer that one of the L.A. members here would always gleefully link their blogs about how L.A. was just "perfect" for 2024, & that they shouldn't accept 2028 as a "consolation prize" once the double-allocation was being speculated about. But no bias there, right?

That was also another point of contention here (before the double-allocation was even a thing), as to which bid would more likely come back to bid for 2028 if they were to lose 2024. And considering how Paris lost the 2012 vote, & if they were to lose again for 2024 (not to mention how the French bid team claimed that the OV site wouldn't be available for a 2028 run), & how keen L.A. was always up for the challenge to continue to bid no matter what, like they had proved in the past, that answer there seemed like an easy one (but of course not to the bias Angelinos, that is). And yes, L.A. was promised an additional $1.8 Billion in funding from the IOC if the city agreed to take on the 2028 Games instead.

[FYI]

*In the end, it really would've been dumb for L.A. not to accept the 2028 Olympics "consolation prize", considering how the IOC sweetened the deal for them to do so. It really was a win-win all the way around for all the parties involved, & particularly for the IOC.

[Sir Rols]

13 hours ago, FYI said:

And there was actually further debate on here on whether or not the IOC was actually going to do it at all when speculation about it had emerged early in 2017, since the main argument was, that the IOC can't just change the rules right in the middle of a bid race, & what does that mean for the other parties that might be interested in 2028 later on. 

I was one of those who expressed misgivings about changing the rules mid-race, for all that the outcome might be desirable (and, yes, of course the Paris-LA double was the best outcome - though I also think it was Paris’ to lose if the race had run to its conclusion).

Now, having seen how things have transpired since then, I still think it set a dangerous precedent and set Bach on his “anything goes - whatever I want - rules and processes are only to be followed as long as they’re convenient” path. It led to the whole questionable 2032 so-called “process” (I’m sure we don’t need to re-hash all that). And for all that making new rules up on the fly may have saved the IOC’s bacon over with 2030,  I’m still a bit sore they still couldn’t stop themselves ignoring their own processes yet again late last year. If they’d stuck by the criteria and deadlines they’d set themselves, right now be looking forward to the EB session this week to see whether France or Sweden was going to be named “preferred candidate” to put forward to vote in Paris - they’d have lost nothing by sticking to the process.