Reporting from Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre in Malaysia – Cities bidding for the 2024 Olympic Games will now need to submit three documents at separate times but won’t have to face the dreaded short-listing process under new rules revealed by International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Director Christophe Dubi in Kuala Lumpur Sunday.
In what can be considered a complete overhaul of the old system, cities will now receive candidate city status as soon as the race begins on September 15, allowing them to create their brand with the Olympic rings to be used for the duration of the campaign which for all cities should last until the votes are cast.
Dubi, however, suggests some scenarios in which cities could be dismissed from the process.
“You could have, already at the very initial stage of the Games concept something that for the IOC Executive Board would not meet the overall intention of where we intend to go with the Games,” he said, responding to a question from GamesBids.com.
“You could have in the second stage a problem with the guarantees that cannot be provided.
“In those circumstances the EB could make the decision not to carry over with that city. Should this be the case, it’s already decided that it be a very transparent process that would have a full and detailed analysis of those reasons and they would be made public.
“The intention is to definitely go with all the cities [to the end]”.
Dubi said that the process is now interactive so any city that fails to meet expectation shouldn’t be surprised if the IOC dismisses it from the bid.
On the September 15 bid cities will receive the full questionnaire with all of the questions for the three stages, however submissions will be scheduled for three different times across the phases.
The phases and dates are:
- Vision, Games Concept and Legacy (15 September to May 2016)
- Governance, Legal and Venue Funding (May to December 2016)
- Games Delivery, Experience & Venue Legacy (December 2016 to September 2017
The new changes were designed to realign the bid process with changes made by the implementation of Agenda 2020. Since bid proposals are now more flexible and creative, the old model of plugging your entire plan into an IOC designed grid is no longer suitable.
“We have to look at a way to spread the workload, not so much on the IOC side, but for the cities and what they will do here is submit their candidature in three stages without duplicating information – which was somewhat the case between the applicant and the bid at the time,” Dubi explained.
“During the candidature there are three sets of different questions that are required. The big picture, the foundation, the details at the end.
“By doing that you spread the load for the candidate city and it allows the IOC and the experts also to look into all the submissions in great detail, to work with the cities and course-correct if need be, and then move with the evaluation commission for the final evaluation.”
“Which now will be possible with the work done previously,” Dubi said.
The IOC also plans to provide a standard finance framework to the cities to help them build and control their bid budgets.
“They have to be as modest as they can, they have to be as creative as they can, we don’t want expenses that are not needed.”
Also to help control costs, international promotion will only be allowed during the last stage of the bid starting December 2016.
Earlier in the Kuala Lumpur Session it was announced that service payments to the IOC will drop from USD $650,000 to $250,000 to be paid in three installments ($50k, $50k and $150k).
There are currently five bids for the 2024 Games including Rome, Paris, Hamburg, Budapest and a yet-to-be-named American city. Both Baku and Toronto are also weighing possible campaigns. With as many as seven, and possibly more cities in the race – the ballot could become cluttered causing a logistical nightmare when factoring in final presentations on the election day.
Dubi shrugged at the possibility responding “every time you have presentations from candidate cities it is an incredible amount of energy that is very positive for the movement.”
With many candidates, Dubi said that evaluation visits could be reduced in time from the current five days which, he said, will be easy because much of the work will have already been done ahead of time.
The IOC will elect the 2024 host city September 2017 in Lima, Peru.
