A projected bill of 7 billion Australian dollars for the Commonwealth Games saw the state of Victoria pull out from hosting the 2026 edition. And with just 1,000 days left to find an alternate venue, it is once again being seen as the Games no one wants. The predicted cost overruns were more than double the estimated expenditure, and Victoria said it was unwilling to pull money out of schools and hospitals and pour it into the sporting event. Birmingham had to step in for Durban in 2022, but the pull-out by one of the more well-off countries in the Commonwealth is significant, given the Games’s struggle to find hosts — and relevance — every four years.
Of course, even the Olympics are struggling to find enthusiastic takers. Paris and Los Angeles were the only cities that bid for the Olympics because the spending on these sporting jamborees often greatly exceeds budgetary limits. Greece was left in severe debt after hosting the Olympics – a sporting spectacle’s ability to bankrupt an economy was starkly exposed post Athens. Sports administrators will not be faulted if they start mulling the option of designating permanent hosting cities for the Olympics, Commonwealth or even the Asian Games.
But the Commonwealth Games face an even starker crisis — in modern times, they are seen as a relic of a fading tradition. The erstwhile Empire Games, with 71 countries that don’t include China, the United States, Russia and most of sporting Europe, are struggling to shrug off the label of being outdated. Victoria’s pull-out, quoting costs, further deepens the misery of an institution that is fighting to survive. It is also a fundamental failure of sport — amateur though it calls itself — to manage a crisp, compact programme and deliver a Games without ambitious and often ruinous spends.
