TOKYO — The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday confirmed Brisbane, Australia, for the 2032 Summer Games. No surprise. This deal was done months ago.
In contrast to the prior city selection process, global spectacles that would match cities against each other, contests running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, this was the IOC’s — and president Thomas Bach’s — new way of getting the job done.
Quietly, efficiently, a meet-up of a qualified city and an interested franchisor.
Will Brisbane turn out to be great? Who knows? Will the Australians turn another bit of magic, like Sydney in 2000? Who knows? What we do know is that Brisbane and Australia are secure enough, now, for the IOC and Bach to say, OK, let’s do this.
And that’s the thing — security.
IOC president Thomas Bach makes it official // Getty Images
Understand: Bach’s No. 1 goal throughout the eight years of his presidency — and the four remaining — is to ensure the stability of the Olympic movement, now and into the future. He has made this plain, time and again.
Go through Bach’s speeches, his public statements, almost everything he says. The underlying theme is ever-present, there since he took office in 2013: ensuring the stability of the IOC. Nothing has changed.
Bach views himself, and appropriately, as the steward of the franchise as it navigates into the 21st century. Security, though, does not mean no change. It means that in certain — in many — ways the franchise needs new methods for a new time. This is what he is trying, sometimes with success, sometimes not, to foist onto a very traditional and conservative apparatus.
Agenda 2020, the purported 2014 reform process — that’s what that was. At least it brought the Olympic Channel.
Agenda 2020+5 — since it’s now 2021, that had to be updated, obviously.
It was clear to many, and especially Bach, particularly after a string of referendum defeats in western democracies, the IOC viewed by taxpayers as a target for everything wrong with the establishment that the old bid city game — as much fun and entertaining spectacle as it was — had to go.
With that in mind, could, should this new way of Olympic city selection be enhanced by more accountability and transparency in the process? Yes.
For instance, why Brisbane, exactly, and why Brisbane now, 11 years out? Is 11 years the new standard instead of seven? What are the deal points that other cities — and, for that matter, others, including the press and public — ought to know about? The good, the bad, the ugly?
That said — does this new way get the job done? Yes.
Without, as was the case, producing recrimination and, in Bach’s terminology, “losers” — like (before his term) Chicago in 2009 for 2016? Yes.
Looking at the matter more broadly, do critics of the IOC and of Bach misunderstand the landscape when they assert that the IOC itself is a relic of another time? Big-time yes.
That is, they completely misunderstand.
Here’s why.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, of course. And the IOC and the Olympic movement have any number of flaws. Assuredly this space has been critical, sharply, any number of times.
Here’s more criticism:
The IOC’s communication strategy is, has been, continues to be dismal. For an entity that seemingly has the world’s best story to tell — hope and dreams — it does about the worst job possible at doing so. It also does a singularly poor job at telling the story of the IOC — how it works, why it’s relevant, why it matters, especially in the 21st century. This is why it is so frequently viewed with such derision and disdain.
Another key matter, and this somehow seems to be more of a challenge than its senior officials can grasp: the IOC is forever seeking to be relevant to the youth demographic but as it demonstrated in a report to its members this week, it completely does not understand the rise of esports and how and why literally hundreds of millions — if not billions — of young people might well be more attracted to gaming than Olympic sports.
That’s a real issue. Why?
Because young people can find not just competition but connection and community in esports in new and compelling ways. That has been the province of the Olympics for these many years.
Indeed, and the pandemic has revealed this with all the more clarity, all of us on Planet Earth not only want but need hope. We need inspiration, the stuff of dreams. Moreover, we not only want human connection — we need it. We crave connection and community. For 125 years, the Olympics has proven a reliable vessel through which the modern world has found an ability to find that hope, make those connections.
This is why corporate sponsors are lined up in support. As the IOC disclosed in the general assembly, (its session, which ended Wednesday), for its next four-year period, which in Olympic jargon is called a quadrennium, income in its top-tier sponsor program will triple to over $3 billion. Common sense says such entities don’t typically back a loser.
Further, for the Summer Games, the IOC has no shortage of would-be hosts waiting for its next round of talks. Start with Budapest and go from there. India will get a Games as soon as it is ready. Qatar or the UAE or Saudi Arabia are going to be in the game sooner than later. This is a fact, and no western handwringing about the Middle East and how it’s different is going to change that — that’s just colonialist nonsense that increasingly is out of line with the hundreds of millions of young people in that part of the world.
The immediate issue the IOC is having is with the Winter Games, and 2030. For 2034, it can count on Salt Lake City. Will it be moved up? Would that work with the LA28 financial model? Or not?
Bach’s term is up in 2025. For the security of the movement, assuming (big assumption) the next three weeks and the Beijing Games next February can come off with relative calm, he has that next to figure out — Winter and 2030.
Change does not come easily upon the Olympic movement. That is one thing everyone, Bach’s supporters and his many vocal critics, can agree upon. For now, it has brought us Brisbane in 2032.