The breakup: Was it a Boston or an Olympics issue?
Or was it both?
Breakups are hard for both sides. Invariably, the questions wind up, what went wrong and who to blame? When it comes to the Olympic Games and Boston’s bid to host them, both sides can point to reasons things fell apart.
Some of the circumstances that caused Massachusetts to reject the Olympic bid can be put at the feet of organizing committee Boston 2024.
People were offended by an early plan to put beach volleyball on the historic Boston Common.
The group failed to engage many landowners on properties it hoped to put venues.
It either underestimated or undersold the opposition to the bid in pitching its plan to the United States Olympic Committee last year.
It fueled perceptions that a small group of political and business elite were attempting to map Boston’s future—especially when it hired former Gov. Deval Patrick, two months removed from the State House and a proponent of Boston 2024 while he was still there, to consult for $7,500 per day.
And in its final days, while fighting to win public support, Boston 2024 allowed itself to wind up in the same headlines as the word “subpoena.’’
The bid, which was dropped Monday, failed to capture public support and generated fierce pushback from multiple opposition groups. Boston 2024 didn’t do itself any favors with the examples listed above.
But some part of Boston’s public regurgitation of the 2024 Summer Games speaks to a larger issue. It matches a trend in other parts of the world. Public sentiment against hosting the games caused basically half of Europe to reject bids for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Boston is just the most recent city to say no.
Michael Payne, a former International Olympic Committee official who has written about the growth of the Olympics since a low-point in the 1980s, said talk about a bruised Olympic brand is overstated.
He cited “unprecedented corporate interest,’’ “TV revenues setting new records,’’ and a list of cities lining up to host the 2024 Games that includes Rome, Paris, Hamburg, and Budapest—all of whom are still set to bid.
Still, it hasn’t been a great few years for the Olympics image.
The troubles were highlighted by the sky-high costs to host the 2008 Beijing and 2014 Sochi Olympics. While the 2012 London Games are widely hailed by many, others say they, too, grew overly expensive. Literature suggesting mega-events like the Olympics are not worth the risk for the potential economic gain continues to pile up.
Costs aside, cities have also objected to the requirements of the IOC for hosting the games. Demands like exclusive Olympic-related traffic lanes and special treatment for IOC members sparked criticism from Oslo, Norway, one of the cities to drop from the 2022 race.
Recent Olympics have also brought social justice issues in bid cities to light. In Rio, which will host the 2016 Summer Games, many Brazilians have been forced from their homes. In the run-up to Sochi’s 2014 Winter Games, the Olympics cast a light on an anti-LGBT Russian law, which became a central controversy ahead of the games.
“The Olympic Movement is in a slow-motion crisis,’’ said Jules Boykoff, an Oregon academic who has studied and written about protest movements against the Olympics. “And the 2022 Winter Olympics is very strong evidence of that. The IOC really wants 2024 to show it can make a really strong comeback.’’
Recognizing the growing resistance, the IOC last year passed a series of reforms meant to make bidding on and hosting the Olympics cheaper. The principles will be utilized in selecting a 2024 host city, and were oft-touted by Boston 2024 as a reason its bid would be different.
For all the talk of reform, though, the IOC still asks for a government guarantee in its host city contract to financially backstop the costs of the games—an issue that has proven especially divisive with past U.S. bids.
The requirement, one of many imposed upon host cities by the IOC, was regularly cited by Boston’s bid opponents as the most risky element of the Olympics plan. As public support sagged, polls consistently showed fears of taxpayer costs were the chief concern. The financial guarantee made it difficult one to quell, even with the pledge of a multi-layered insurance plan from Boston 2024 to protect the public purse.
In Boston, which had never really shown serious enthusiasm for the bid, and which still had the high costs of the Big Dig fresh in mind, the threat of public money going toward staging the games was anathema.
The bid was struggling for other reasons too, but on Monday, the financial guarantee proved its death knell.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh last year wrote to the USOC saying he understood the ramifications of a host city contract and that he would be able to sign one. He had tempered that position in the months since, however. And the USOC, seeking signs of public and political support around the floundering bid, pressured him to recommit to doing so in recent days.
On Monday he declined, specifically citing the vex of the guarantee.
Within a matter of hours, Boston 2024 was no more.
Now, does that say more about Boston or the Olympics? Or does it say something about both?
What a Boston Olympics would have looked like
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