On Tuesday, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) expressed much interest in narrowing down its field of potential cities to make a bid to host the 2024 summer Olympics.
“The dialogue is really around which cities do we think can put together a bid that is going to be a fantastic bid and which cities do we think have the opportunity to win… Before we make a final decision we need to get into fairly detailed discussions with hopefully a smaller number of cities so our objective is to be in that position within the next couple of months,” stated USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun.
Last year, the USOC sent out 35 letters to the biggest cities in the United States to gauge the interests US cities had in hosting the Olympics once again.
The list is expected to be narrowed to two or three finalists within the next month, with San Diego being the only city to have submitted a formal bid thus far.
The United States has not hosted an Olympics since the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah and has not hosted a Summer Olympics since the 1996 games in Atlanta, Georgia.
Part of the reason the USOC has had issues in cementing a US Olympic bid was due to tense relations with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over revenue sharing.
In an open-ended contract created with the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, the USOC received a 20 percent share of global sponsorship revenue and a 12.75 percent cut of U.S. broadcast rights deals. When the US went to apply to host the 2012 Olympics in New York, it received a huge amount of backlash from the IOC due to the international community feeling that the US shares were excessive.
In 2012, however, the USOC and IOC came together to enter into negotiations to settle the dispute. Since that time, Blackmun and the USOC have gotten back in the good graces of the IOC and have decided to submit another bid.
“We’ve received plenty of encouragement from multiple IOC members about a bid,” USOC chairman Larry Probst said.
At the current time, the leaders to host the 2024 summer Olympics in the United States are San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and San Diego.
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