Let the games… go somewhere else

Shock horror news of the day: Victoria has cancelled the 2026 Commonwealth Games! In other news, a bunch of people suddenly realised for the first time today Victoria actually had the 2026 games to begin with…

The 2026 Commonwealth Games may not go ahead after Victoria withdrew as host, saying it was not prepared to spend as much as $7bn on “a 12-day sporting event”.
In an announcement labelled by the Commonwealth Games Federation as “hugely disappointing”, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said the cost of hosting the event had blown out from an earlier estimate of $2.6bn.
Andrews said his government would redirect the money to regional housing and sporting infrastructure.
“The Games will not proceed in Victoria in 2026,” Andrews said.
“We have informed Commonwealth Games authorities of our decision to seek to terminate the contract, and to … not host the games.”

I think it’s not entirely out of line to ask how the projected cost blew out that much (especially since the 2018 Gold Coast games only cost $1.6b, so the original estimate was already a lot more than that), but by the same token pulling out of such a ludicrously expensive event seems like the, I don’t know, responsible thing to do? At least the Murdoch media goons are taking it well:

Elsewhere there’s speculation about what this means for the Comm Games in general, but from what I’m now reading the games have been in chaos for years now behind the scenes… the 2022 games were supposed to go to Durban, mostly because they were the only bidder for them, but the CG Federation stripped them of the games cos they weren’t going to be able to afford them… thereupon Birmingham got the 2022 games after initially planning to go for 2026, leaving the latter games without a host after the CGF rejected a bunch of offers on cost grounds, until as late as April last year Dan Andrews put his hand up. And now… well.

So trying to get anywhere to host the Comm Games has apparently been a nightmare for years. Possibly because, let’s face it, it’s the Comm Games; by its nature it excludes an enormous chunk of the world’s athletes, like pretty much all other international games events that aren’t the Olympics (I saw it called “the Aldi Olympics” on Twitter, which I thought was fantastic). How much do people really care about it, with the obvious exception of people directly involved in sport? Is this such earth-shattering news for most people? If Brisbane suddenly decided it couldn’t hold the 2032 Olympics, that seems like it would be actually big news cos that would potentially affect the entire sporting world, not just the Commonwealth (although I don’t think the IOC would let them away with it; look at their insistence on the 2020 games going ahead even a year late despite Covid). I can’t help but feel most of the horror being expressed over the tragedy is because, well, it’s Dan Andrews. Media cares more about shitting on him than they do about the Comm Games per se…