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Comment by pg_bot | Hacker News Reader

I think it is likely that the Olympics will move to a permanent location or a rotation of host cities in the future. Most local governments and populations have realized that building the infrastructure for the games is a losing proposition. The process for bidding is ripe for local and international corruption and the IOC vacuums up all of the profits.

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>I think it is likely that the Olympics will move to a permanent location

To a logical person this makes the most sense to host a sporting event like that.

But what you're not understanding is it's not a sporting event, it's a grift. And hosting it in one place doesn't benefit the Olympic committee at all. Why would you host something in one space and be responsible for it when you can have cities beg and throw money at you to host in their city then leave and make them deal with cleaning it up after.

No, I understand that. It's just that even countries that are despotic are no longer bidding for the Olympics. I think if 5-10 major countries are willing to collude they could tip the scales in their favor. Say France, USA, Japan, Brazil, and Australia want to host the summer Olympics and Canada, Norway, Austria, Italy, and the USA want to host the winter Olympics for the next 100 years and will not bid against one another, who else is going to host the games?

Countries are already withdrawing their bids. Brisbane was the only city vying for the games in 2032.

I'd rather guess that, similar to FIFA World Cups and F1 races it will be mostly a rotation between the dictatorships that can pay the most.

There aren't many democracies left willing to pay for either of these mega events (or in case of F1, the starting fees for the teams), but there will always be a decent supply of dictatorships or oil sheiks wishing to white-wash their image and a supply of delegates/decisionmakers who can be bribed appropriately.

The next two Olympics are being held in Paris and Los Angeles. The oil sheikdom World Cup is being followed by one shared between the US, Canada and Mexico. Formula One added events in Miami, Holland and Portugal to the calendar recently along with lomg standing events in several other democracies plus some petrostates and China.

The idea that democracies aren't interested in hosting major sporting events isn't based in reality.

Paris and LA were awarded the Olympics as a single decision without the normal bidding process - because there weren't any other legitimate and serious bids being put forward.

The 2026 World Cup was awarded to "North America" because the only other bid was from Morocco and FIFA didn't think they had any hope of being able to pull it off. They estimated that Morocco would need to devote 15-25% of their entire GDP just to build the facilities. The North American bid just had a list of cities and stadiums that might host some games and told FIFA to take it or leave it. They only decided on which stadiums they are going to use last month! And the list is missing a bunch of big cities that said "no thanks, we'll pass"!

> The idea that democracies aren't interested in hosting major sporting events isn't based in reality.

It's based on all of the contra-Olympic/WC movements that tend to crop up and successfully prevent any talks as soon as even rumors begin floating around.

> plus some petrostates and China

Out of the last 20 years worth of additions to the F1 calendar, we have Jeddah (Saudi-Arabia), Doha (Qatar), Baku (Azerbaijan), Sochi (Russia), Abu Dhabi (UAE), Istanbul (Turkey), Singapore, Bahrain and Shanghai (China) - which means 17 new tracks, of which nine are in a dictatorship of one or another kind.

That's just way too much appeasing to bribery for me.

4/22 F1 races are in 'dictatorships'. Two of chose races have existed for many years (10-20 years). Doesn't seem like there's been a rush to dictatorships based on that.

Apart from Qatar (and arguably Russia) World Cup's, including the one after Qatar don't appear to have been held in dictatorships at all.

>I think it is likely that the Olympics will move to a permanent location or a rotation of host cities in the future.

Eh. People have been talking about this for fifty years. I wouldn't hold my breath.

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