Awarding the Olympic Games 2024 and 2028 is a golden opportunity
Speaking at a press conference, IOC President Thomas Bach highlighted that having the two great Candidate Cities of Los Angeles and Paris is a “golden opportunity” for the Olympic Movement. He gave further details on the principle decision of the IOC Executive Board to put forward a proposal to the IOC Session to award the Olympic Games 2024 and 2028 at the same time. The Executive Board has today called for an Extraordinary IOC Session to take place on 11 and 12 July in Lausanne to discuss this proposal.
At the press conference, President Bach said: “The situation of these candidature for 2024, having two such great cities and such great countries, having two candidatures which are really enthusiastic and really promoting the Olympic Games and Olympic Spirit in a great way - this represents a golden opportunity for the Olympic Games and the IOC.”
“Both cities have really embraced Olympic Agenda 2020 in different ways but particularly in the way they are planning to use a record number of existing and temporary facilities. This is something we have not seen in this dimension before in the Olympic Games and this will lead to significant cost reductions in the organisation of the Olympic Games and will make the Games more sustainable and more feasible.”
“We want to make this change and we can make this change and we can do it without amending the Olympic Charter. The Charter is flexible enough in this respect.”
The signal we are sending is very clear – a golden opportunity and a fascinating race.
“First of all, it is the IOC Members who have to express themselves on this proposal and only after the Members have had this opportunity will we enter in to deeper discussions with the Candidate Cities. Conversations so far have been very open. No one has closed the door. Discussions and negotiation may start, but only after Members have given the green light to this.”
“The signal we are sending is very clear – a golden opportunity and a fascinating race. It is hard to imagine something better. It is also a strong signal of stability for the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games. It is an expression of mutual confidence. It is also offering a great potential for the two cities to cooperate. Transfer of knowledge could even start from day one – there could also be the joint development of some turnkey solutions. There is a great potential in such a double allocation.”
On the future candidature process from the Olympic Winter Games 2026 onwards the IOC Executive Board decided to address the specific challenges of the current candidature process. President Bach said:
“We have also challenges. We have discussed this with regards to the Olympic Winter Games 2026. In principle, there are two reasons why the Executive Board thinks a change is necessary: one external, one internal. Firstly, the change in the decision-making procedure in many western countries. Today if the establishment is united behind one project, people now say there must be something wrong. We could complain about this change in attitude but we cannot ignore it. Even less so, because we are giving some arguments for this scepticism. To put it in a nutshell, the candidature procedure in this world we are living in has become too expensive and too onerous for potential candidate cities and in this way it is producing too many losers.”
The IOC will customize its approach to the needs of the cities in order to develop together the best value proposition for the cities and for the Games.
“The IOC will customize its approach to the needs of the cities in order to develop together the best value proposition for the cities and for the Games. All this will lead to a lighter process for the cities with reduced costs.”