This academic research project examines cities’ attempts to host sporting ‘megaevents’. While a Summer or Winter Olympic hosting contract is the highest profile victory for bidders, cities also routine purse specialty events (e.g. World Student Games, Youth Olympics) and regional multi-sport events (All Africa, Asian, Commonwealth, European, and Pan American Games). For example, nearly all ‘successful’ Olympic bids are built on a longer planning history of smaller events and failed Olympic bids. In the past 20 years – as megaevents have become larger and more cities have begun to bid to host them – bidding has emerged as a significant component of global urban policymaking. Over this project’s 20 year study period (1992-2012), 109 cities placed bids on these various major events, many bid on multiple events, and a small minority bid as many as five times for the same event. These cities make multi-billion dollar investment committments and sweeping policy changes in fields ranging from zoning ordinances to national fiscal structure. Only a small minority of these bids can be successful, but many bid plans are completed to some degree even if the bid fails, because individual bids to host particular events are often only one part of long term urban strategies based on multiple types of megaevents.

This project is funded through the International Olympic Committee’s Postgraduate Research Grant Programme, and the US National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. The project is hosted by Clark University’s Graduate School of Geography.

This research asks why more ambitious bidding has become both possible and necessary to win a contract to host a megaevent: (1) Why have megaevent bidding practices become more ambitious? (2) How do policymakers, non-governmental organizations, and firms transfer and apply bidding practices between different cities? (3) What is the effect of these evolving bidding practices on the composition of stakeholders involved in development planning? We trace the international and historical connections between cities’ bids: (1) changes in the types of development and planning policy objectives pursued by bid stakeholders; (2) funding, contracting, and knowledge sharing between cities; and (3) the ways in which new types of bids build new types of urban-national-transnational partnerships.

For more information please contact John Lauermann (jlauermann [at] clarku.edu), a PhD candidate and the project manager.