The IOC can no longer sell its winter Olympics

You want to lose a referendum? Ask the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for advice: The popular rejection on November 14 of Calgary's bid to host the 2026 Olympic Games was ninth in a row. While the IOC has often kept its distance from these elections, it is no longer the case: the Lausanne instance has seized the urgency to end this wave of setbacks, which shrinks the lists of candidates for the Olympics.

They were only two delegations, Wednesday, November 28 in Tokyo, to submit their candidacy for the Olympic Winter Games 2026 to the representatives of the National Olympic Committees: Stockholm and Milan-Cortina d'Ampezzo. Two survivors of an obstacle course that saw five other candidates disappear: Erzurum (Turkey), Graz (Austria), Sapporo (Japan), Sion (Switzerland) and Calgary (Canada).

A spectacular reversal compared to the end of the last century, when the candidatures multiplied, but in the line of the Olympics 2018 and 2022 where only two cities had clashed. "Today we have a list of 34 cities interested in Olympic Games or Youth Gamessays Christophe Dubi, director of the Olympic Games at the IOC. This is a list that would be the pride of most organizations and "business", but what matters is to have relevant projects. We are not looking for 25 candidates and 24 losers. We only need one good project. "

Concerning 2026, Christophe Dubi could be served: the Swedish project is held at arm's length by the IOC and the National Olympic Committee, but the municipality and the government, minority in Parliament, are very reserved. Neither Stockholm nor the state want to pay a crown to this project, whose initiators say it can be fully financed by private funds.

Milan favorite with a project to the economy

The Italian government, after blowing hot and cold on Milan-Cortina d'Ampezzo, has recently committed to the voice of Matteo Salvini to pimp in the event that the rich regions of Lombardy and Veneto, as well as that their companies, were not enough to finance a project to the economy. The Italian project, which is a favorite for the election of the host city in June, is all that Thomas Bach's IOC wishes in the framework of its "2020 agenda", one of the priorities of which was to make the Games cheaper: it uses existing facilities, even making the Games much less compact than those of Pyeongchang (South Korea), where you could reach all the sites in one hour.

After the crazy budgets of Sochi 2014, Pyeongchang 2018 and Beijing 2022, the IOC's obsession is to be able to display less important organizational budgets and to put an end to the "white elephants", these installations built for the Olympics and which fall into decay. Not a city has escaped for decades. It is these two conditions that will make the Games more desirable. On the other hand, it refuses to share the revenue generated by the Games, which is used to finance international federations, national committees and the IOC's comfortable lifestyle.

"The IOC has not been aggressive enough in its communication on the reality of costs nor flexible enough to appeal to potential candidates, said at World in February the former IOC Marketing Director (1988-2004), Michael Payne. The traditional countries of the Winter Games look at these sums and say to themselves: "Impossible to spend all that." But if you already have the infrastructure, the cost of the Games is 2 billion euros. " Pyeongchang's budget was 1.76 billion euros; it is announced at less than 1.5 billion for Stockholm and Milan.

"The economic question remains the problematic n^o 1 '

"We have simplified the guarantees and the organization, so that the economic project is not called into question., replies Christophe Dubi. But that remains the problem n^o 1, which brought down the plans of Calgary and Sion. There is still a lot of work to show that the model works. "

The drama of the IOC is that of the time, laments Switzerland: people would see no further than their interest. "We are no longer in large projects of society carried by governments or badociations but in a much more individual relationship. People ask themselves, "What do I gain from it?" One must find messages that resonate at the level of the individual. "

Would the referendums not have to do with the many corruption cases in the world of sport, including in the remit of the Olympic Games? A survey is opened in France on the conditions of the 2016 Olympic Summer Games in Rio and 2020 in Tokyo. According to Christophe Dubi, opinion polls in cities that rejected the Olympic Games put forward almost exclusively the economic conditions. And never the suspicions of corruption.

Corruption cases

"The image of the IOC comes into play, of courseadmits the VRP of the 2026 Olympics. That's why in 2014, following his election, Thomas Bach said: "We open the window, we let in fresh air, we turn the page on governance, how to organize the Games, to connect the Olympic movement to the general public. "

A message that is currently struggling to pbad, constantly polluted by new cases involving IOC members, most recently with the influential Kuwaiti Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahd Al-Sabah.

The world of Olympism, and particularly of the IOC, is a terrible place to be, accustomed to the palaces of the big capitals and the Swiss congress halls. Can these lost referendums speed up his moult? This will be vital, said in June the Swiss national councilor Matthias Aebischer, supporter of Sion 2026 and president of the parliamentary sports group: "In the vast majority of democratic countries in Europe, [l’idée olympique] no longer seduces anyonehe told the newspaper The weather. The IOC now has a real problem. (…) It must be totally in question. On the one hand, it must put an end to gigantism and corruption. On the other hand, it must seriously commit to environmentally friendly Games and give financial guarantees to the organizing cities in case of deficit. Otherwise, the winter Olympics are dead! "