- UK government wants multiple cities in North of England to host Olympics
- Manchester wins rights to host 2031 Netball World Cup
- Britten opens up on losing race for 2029 Athletics Championships
UK Sport has submitted a strategic assessment for a potential bid from the North of England for the 2040 Olympic Games but admits the rising cost of hosting major sporting events has led to a more considered approach about which projects it can back.
In May, the UK government commissioned UK Sport to evaluate the feasibility, costs and potential benefits of any bid, which would adopt a multi-city hosting model including Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle, as part of a wider economic and sporting regeneration project.
Speaking to SportsPro at SportAccord Forum in Lausanne, UK Sport’s deputy director and head of major events and external affairs Esther Britten confirmed the initial work had been done and that the time was right to explore bringing the Olympics back to Britain after a successful staging of the Games at London 2012.
“UK Sport had always considered that there was no way we could be a partner to the Olympic and Paralympic movement again before the 2040s,” she said. “So, it’s been really interesting to start some of that strategic look. It’s potentially a long-term project. Let’s see where it goes. We’ve submitted that strategic assessment, and we’ll see what happens next.”
Britten calls London 2012 “one of the greatest regeneration projects global sport has ever seen”, with the Games serving as the crown jewel of a decade that also saw the UK host the men’s Rugby World Cup, World Athletics Championships and men’s Cricket World Cup. More recently, the country has welcomed the Uefa Women’s Euros, multiple editions of the Commonwealth Games, and an array of World and European championships in various sports.
Even without the 2040 Olympics, the UK can also boast a healthy pipeline of events that includes Euro 2028, the Tour de France and, confirmed last week, the Netball World Cup in Manchester. It is also the front runner for the 2035 Fifa Women’s World Cup.
The UK government has allocated UK£500 million (US$667 million) to aid event delivery. However, UK Sport says any bid it supports must meet a range of sporting, economic and societal criteria, meaning some events are deprioritised because their impact is not sufficient enough to justify the cost.
“We have increasingly had to say no to some events,” Britten explained. “When I started in this role, a long time ago, we very rarely said no. We kind of understood: ‘okay, it’s the European Championships in this sport, we’ve never hosted it before, we really should’. Now we are much more [likely to say] it’s just too expensive for us’.”
One race UK Sport was keen to win was the rights to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships. A successful staging of the event in 2017 in London, coupled with multiple iterations of the Commonwealth Games and the 2026 European Athletics Championships in Birmingham, had raised hopes its bid would be successful. However, London was beaten by rivals Nairobi and Munich, meaning 2033 is the next available vacancy.
“We knew this was going to be competitive from the start,” said Britten. “We actually took the decision to announce early that we were going to bid for 2029, and quite unusually, we even announced the funding package that we’d secured. That was a tactic to try and fend off some of our rivals. It unfortunately didn’t make a difference this time.
“It is brilliant to see World Athletics having that much competition. To see three European cities – Rome, London and Munich – back in a bidding race for arguably the third-biggest event in the world … and the opportunity for that event to go to Kenya for the first time – that is absolutely brilliant for World Athletics and is testament to the work that they’ve done to deliver a brilliant property.
“We knew it would be competitive. We don’t often lose, so we were delighted to congratulate the Kenyans and the Germans on winning ’29 and ’31.”
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