Boston’s Olympic bid and the evolving urban politics of event-led development

Abstract

The sports mega-events industry is in the midst of a significant reorganization, and the urban politics of event-led development planning is increasingly tumultuous. Three trends stand out: (1) the mega-events industry has been professionalized through consultancies, sports federations' urban policy programs, and city-to-city knowledge-sharing partnerships.(2) Critics of mega-events have been successful in drawing attention to state intervention and public subsidies involved in megaevent planning. (3) A proliferation of anti-bid social movements has pursued a form of urban politics, which more aggressively questions the legitimacy of using mega-events to pursue urban development. I evaluate the implications of these trends with a case study of a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Boston. The failure of the Boston bid illustrates increasing tensions between cities and the mega-events industry.

Public trust in mega event planning institutions: The role of knowledge, transparency and corruption

“…As the anti-corruption movements demanding good governance and adherence to the principles of democracy in mega-event development become global, other host countries can also expect similar situations to that of Brazil and face the challenges of maintaining the legitimacy of megaevent planning bodies. Legitimacy of and public support for mega-events is central to their sustainability (Bramwell, 1997;Gursoy et al, 2017;O'Brien, 2006;Kaplanidou, Al Emadi, Sagas, Diop, and Fritz, 2016;Lauermann, 2016). Government of host countries can promote good governance and gain legitimacy in and garner public support for mega-event development by fostering public trust (Park and Blenkinsopp, 2011).…”

Public Opinion in Olympic Cities: From Bidding to Retrospection

“…This occurred in spite of the fact that Oslo had already been short-listed by the IOC as a candidate city, the city was ranked highly by the Advisory Working Group to the IOC, and the city withdrew merely nine months before the IOC made their final decision, thereby reducing the field of bid cities to only two. Another dramatic withdrawal took place in Boston in 2015 where concerted citizen opposition to hosting the 2024 Games was intense (Lauermann 2016) and also by referendum in Hamburg with the prospect of even more referendums in other bid cities, which suggests that we have entered a new era in public input about hosting the Games. Citizen activism has created considerable uncertainty about the Olympic brand from a host city perspective and has already contributed to reform of IOC expectations and procedures in host city selection.…”

Challenges and Opportunities to Sustainable Sport Tourism Events: Insights from an Urban Host City

“…(Nhamo, Dube, Chikodzi (2020) 2.4 Challenges of hosting sports tourism events Sports tourism events of all size are viewed as major catalysts of social and economic development in different parts of the world (OECD, 2010, Peric, 2018, Nyikaana, 2018, Sant, Misener & Mason 2020 making hosting an increasingly important policy objectives of many governments. While some cities have withdrawn from bids in light of growing cost of competing for and staging events (Flyvberg,Stewart and Budzier,2016;Lauermann 2016),many other cities and regions continue to vie for hosting right (De Nooij and Van den Berg,2018;Solberg and Olderoien 2018).Additionally, other countries from Asia,Africa and the Latin America have emerged as new players in bidding for and hosting mega sports tourism events(Odhiambo 2015).On the other hand small events have also increasingly started gaining popularity and being sought by many cities(Gibson,Kaplanidou,& Kang(2012);Njoroge et al 2017) Despite this efforts,the process of bidding to host sports events has often been surrounded by various controversies, political machinations, promises of financial gains and economic growth (MacAloon,2016;Bason and Grix,2017).For instance, the recent granting of hosting rights to Qatar and China to host 2022 FIFA World Cup and 2022Winter Games respectively has been faced with alleged corruption, backhander and brown bag payment (Blake and Calvert 2015).There has been increasingly evidence that healthy competitions to host the Olympics is coming to an end. This has not only affected the bidding efforts for cities in developing countries but also has also locked out potential cities from bidding for hosting rights.…”