The city of Boston has withdrawn its bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games following a lack of public support.
The bid faced fierce opposition from local residents from the very beginning, including concerns over the amount of public funds being used to pay for “inevitable cost overruns”.
In somewhat bitterly worded statements, the Boston 2024 campaign team and the US Olympic Committee (USOC) said they remained convinced that the Games would’ve benefitted the city “for decades to come” and that, given time, the public would’ve been won over.
Boston 2024 partnership chair Steve Pagliuca – also a private equity investor and managing director of venture capital company BainCapital – said: “With more time to engage in a discussion about the bid – about its 8,000 new units of housing, tens of thousands of new jobs, and new tax revenues for the city – we think public support would grow in Boston and across the Commonwealth.
“We continue to believe that hosting the Games would have brought transformational benefits to Boston and the benefits far outweigh the risks.”
The US Olympic Committee (USOC) said it remains committed to hosting the 2024 Olympic Games and has until 15 September to find another US bid city and to send documents to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
USOC chief Scott Blackmun said: “The USOC would very much like to see an American city host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024. We will immediately begin to explore whether we can do so on a basis consistent with our guiding principles, to which we remain firmly committed.
“We understand the reality of the timeline that is before us. We will brief the media on our progress towards a decision later in August, and we will not have any public statements on the subject of a possible bid until then.”
USOC chose Boston as its preferred bid city in January 2015, over competing offers from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
It is now believed that Los Angeles is the most likely city to be put forward as the official bid city.
Other countries that have shown interest in hosting the Games include Germany (Hamburg), Italy (Rome), France (Paris), and Hungary (Budapest).
The host of the games will be announced at the 130th IOC Session in Lima, Peru in 2017.
