The International Olympic Committee, we are told, is constantly striving to remain relevant in the modern age and broaden its appeal to younger audiences. And so, perhaps, its latest bidding process owes more than a nod to that staple of youth culture: the scripted reality television show.
With only two cities remaining in the race for the 2024 summer Games, the IOC has taken an unprecedented step: bundling the 2024 and 2028 events together, naming Paris and Los Angeles as the hosts, and letting them decide among themselves who goes first. Or, to use a more relatable parlance, Paris and Los Angeles have essentially been dispatched to the Hideaway, plied with booze and told to get down to business. Meanwhile, the likes of Budapest and Doha fume conspiratorially by the pool, whispering furtively about how LA always looked the sort who would go all the way on a first date.
Really, though, the broader story here is one of decline: of fading relevance, of the increasingly abusive relationship between the Olympic Games and the cities it fleetingly calls home. The sight of the IOC essentially being forced to give away its next two Games raises a question that should alarm the entire Olympic movement: what happens to the Olympics when nobody wants to host them any more?
To answer this question, it helps to think of the modern Olympics not as a traditional athletic gathering, but as a sort of giant sport rave. People travel great distances to congregate, to perform, to express themselves, to connect with others, to share in something larger, to discover the limits of their own bodies, perhaps with the benefit of a little chemical enhancement. Yes, everyone loves attending a rave. But far fewer of us would be prepared to host one in our living rooms.
There is a certain circular irony in the re-emergence of Los Angeles to the Olympic story. Three decades ago, with the Games at a nadir, it became the first host city in living memory to turn a profit from the event. Los Angeles 1984 proved a milestone, but in time also a chimera. Successive cities tried to replicate its model but succeeded only in running up crippling debts. The London Olympics ended up costing around four times its original estimate. Last week the organisers of Tokyo 2020 admitted that its budget, which has already doubled, may yet rise further.
And so, over the years, the Olympics has seen its potential suitors slowly dwindle. Budapest, Rome and Hamburg all pulled out well before the 2024 deadline. The right to host the 2022 Winter Olympics was contested by just two cities – Almaty in Kazakhstan and Beijing. Even the IOC admits that without serious reforms, its nightmare scenario – an Olympics without a home – is a real possibility.
What shape those reforms might take, of course, is another matter entirely. Perhaps the most fundamental shift will be in the balance of power between big sporting events and the places that host them.
Perhaps the underwhelming Rio Games, with its excruciating white noise of apathy and popular protest, were the first twinges of a rebellion against the modern Olympics, which in its worst manifestations is not so much a sporting event as a noxious invading power, a tsunami of rapacious capitalism with a contempt for democracy. Perhaps the Olympics of the future will be more like a house guest, and less like a very rich squatter.
