Who Wins Olympic Bids?

Wolfgang Maennig and Christopher Vierhaus
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Christopher Vierhaus: Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg

No 50, Working Papers from Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg

Abstract: The prospect of hosting the Olympic Games is attractive to many cities around the world. This article examines 147 variables’ potential to discriminate successful from unsuccessful Olympic bids. Our stepwise, rank-ordered logistic regression model includes 10 determinants supporting the contention that economic, political and sports/Olympic factors are important for winning the host city election. IOC members favor cities if more than 2/3 of the population support the bid, but disfavor bidding cities of fewer than 2.5 million inhabitants and bids lacking a sufficient number of existing stadiums. Hosts are characterized by larger markets and higher medium-term growth economies. Olympic bids that follow a political liberalization are rewarded with additional votes. Moreover, successful bids are more experienced at hosting and have no dispute with the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Finally, we observe “it is the country’s turn” election behavior – countries that have not hosted the Olympics for a long period are preferred.

Keywords: Olympic Summer Games; mega events; bid cities; host city election; bidding process; IOC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2015-10-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published in Hamburg Contemporary Economic Discussions, Issue 50, 2015

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http://www.hced.uni-hamburg.de/WorkingPapers/HCED-050.pdf Third Version, 2015 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hce:wpaper:050

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