https://www.forbes.com.au/news/world-news/victoria-cancelling-2026-commonwealth-games-plans/
The 2026 Commonwealth Games in regional Victoria will not go ahead, Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed in a bombshell announcement.
It’s an extraordinary move, but I think they’re spot on. It’s a huge amount of money to spend on a sporting even for a few weeks when Victoria is in a real cost-of-living crisis. There are much more pressing priorities for regional Victoria than a legacy of some upgraded sports venues.
Agreed. All these big sporting events should just focus on locations with existing sufficient infrastructure. All those underpaid workers who died for the World Cup in Qatar to happen…. For what?
To be immediately forgotten by the climax.
Qatar could not possibly have gotten a greater blessing than that match completely obliterating any discussion or protest around the Cup that year. They got away with some truly unbelievable shit.
I think the idea of using these big sporting events to upgrade or build new facilities is a good one, however the current practice where the host nation/city sits on most/all the expenses and the organizer/owner of the event reeps the profit is completely turned on it's head.
There is enough money involved in these events amd organizations that they should foot more of (maybe most of) the bill to build the facilities and infrastructure, and the host covers some aspects as well as providing the permits and location itself.
Furthermore, some events such the Olympics have such ridiculous demands that cities/nations should start telling them to fuck off imo. One of the more obvious ones being the demand that IOC leaders require a direct private road accessible by limo between their hotel and the venues
Here's hoping Queensland has the spine to say the same thing about the Olympics.
They want to bulldoze a 100 year old primary school so they can knock down a stadium we already have - to build a new one worth 2.7 billion in exactly the same place. Meanwhile, our rents are going crazy as locals get forced out of their support networks, there's rough sleepers being displaced and at times outright attacked by the states support workers, our education system is now decades underfunded and the health system isn't far behind.
We didn't ask for the Olympics. The campaign was a businessmans vanity project. It's insane to shoulder the burden of that frivolity right now.
Good. Now's not the time to sink 3-7 billion dollars on a 12 day vanity project for the regions. The fact that every other states is also throwing their hands up and saying "not me" is probably a good indicator that it's the right move
Offering an alternative and mostly unpopular view, there are lot of things that society should spend that may not always have a great financial return on investment but will contribute to the culture of society (sports, art, entertainment, history, etc).
That said I do think the Commonwealth Games is a massive cost sink during poor financial conditions and sports already gets a disproportionate amount of funding compared to the others so I don't think this is necessarily a bad move!
Even if you deliberately target "blowing millions of dollars with no expectation of a return", there are still better things to spend the money on.
Big sports events are a mad circus, all cost, no benefit is the rule. It's extremely rare that a country/city benefits from a sports events, if ever. Sometimes people point out renovations done to cities that were useful, but those renovations could have been done without the excuse of the games. Building sports infrastructure with a single event in mind is prone to disaster, and don't mention all the corruption behind. It should be FIFA or the Olympics making the bids, not the cities/countries..
Big sports events are a huge pain for residents and taxpayers. And actually it didn't have to be that way, with sensible demands many cities in the world could easily host them without extra works and expenses.. they're a finantial disaster by design.
Hope others will learn from Victoria and take their bids back. I'm looking at you, Portugal (WC 2030).
Nobody likes him, but he recently got re-elected with an even larger swing towards him?
Something doesn't add up. Surely you mean the biased media doesn't like Dan?