With 22 months left in the long campaign to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, each bid city committee is turning its attention to the world stage, building relationships with International Olympic Committee voters and talking to the international media.
Los Angeles 2024 has said it’s raised $35 million to fund its bid, and has emphasized its commitment to the athlete experience, its cosmopolitan blend of dozens of nationalities and ethnicities, and Southern California’s sporting tradition. In some of their first face-to-face interviews with American reporters during the Association of National Olympic Committees’ meeting in Washington, D.C., the four committees competing with Los Angeles sought to put their best foot forward.
Here’s a sense of each international bid’s top selling points:
■ Paris: As a city that’s bid unsuccessfully three times in 25 years, Paris wants the world to know it’s learned lessons. That means athletes are in charge, not politicians.
“We were told at the time that maybe our precedent bids were political bids, or run by politicians, and this time around we were very careful in putting the sports movement up front,” said bid committee CEO Etienne Thobois.
He was joined by Tony Estanguet, a three-time gold medalist slalom canoeist and IOC member, who was named co-president of the bid Sept. 15. World Rugby Chairman Bernard Lapasset is the other co-president.
Athletes led working groups that helped develop a feasibility study on the 2024 effort, and have been integral in luring more major non-Olympic world sporting competitions to France, such as the 2015 track cycling world championships and the 2018 Ryder Cup.
Paris has a bid budget of about $66 million, Thobois said, which is half funded by the government.
■ Rome: Rome 2024 is selling Italian culture and the good life, embodied by bid chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, former Ferrari chairman, 1990 World Cup chief organizer and current chairman of Alitalia.
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“The athletes are not just a machine to win. ... They also want to smell the culture.”
Rome 2024 Chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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If awarded the Games, Rome will allow accredited Olympic guests to ride high-speed rails free, allowing them to visit the historic cities of Florence and Naples, Montezemolo said. Preliminary venue plans call for beach volleyball at the Roman Forum and a nightly parade of medal-winning athletes at the Colosseum.
“Rome means culture, it means beauty, it means the possibility of enjoying the quality of Italian life,” Montezemolo said. “It means the Vatican. It means something unique. For me, the main goal is the athletes. But the athletes — the athletes are not just a machine to win. Of course they are there to win, but they also want to smell the culture.”
He also spoke of the rich tradition from the 1960 Rome Olympics. Montezemolo even asserts there’s an upside to the corruption trials of local politicians and organized crime figures accused in the massive Mafia Capitale scandal.
“If this would happen in two years, it will be a disaster,” he said. “But now, its effect is sort of a purification of the town, to bring in a new leading class.”
Rome will set a bid budget in January. Various media reports have pegged the budget at $11 million, but Montezemolo said that figure was ridiculously low.
■ Hamburg, Germany: Hamburg can’t quite fully embrace the international campaign yet, because it must pass muster with local voters first in a referendum on Nov. 29. It’s the only city to face a referendum to date.
“It’s a good thing, because it gives us a unique selling point, if you like,” said bid CEO Nikolas Hill.
A positive result will be demonstrable evidence of public support, stronger than mere opinion polling, Hill said. It also will allow Hamburg to claim that the city itself, not merely its political leaders, has invited the Olympics.
Hill also wants to make a positive out of Hamburg’s relative anonymity compared to its competitors, which include three national capitals and a two-time Olympic host in Los Angeles.
“People don’t have a cliche in their minds for what a city might stand for and what it’s all about,” Hill said. “And that’s an opportunity to give them all a new idea.”
Hamburg’s bid budget is $55 million, half funded by corporate support and the other half by local and federal government.
■ Budapest, Hungary: The Hungarian capital has bid five times before, but not since 1960, and is eager to demonstrate its modern bona fides. On Nov. 1, Budapest surged 35 spots in a year to No. 12 on the research and benchmarking service SportCal’s list of top global sports cities.
“This is no coincidence,” said Erik Siklos, marketing and communications director for the Hungarian Olympic Committee. “Budapest has been constantly proving itself as an excellent host city, providing high-quality services in the field of international event organizing and being a popular and vivid location for athletes of numerous world events.”
Further details of its bid will be published in February, he said. “The respect of sports, the respect of the Games, the respect of Olympic champions lies deeply in our hearts,” Siklos said. “Olympism is a core element of Hungarian culture.”
Budapest has set a $50 million budget for the bid.
