Investing.com -- In a widely expected move, Los Angeles was selected as the U.S. bid city for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games on Tuesday, more than a month after Boston dropped its proposal to host the XXXIII games in modern history.
The United States Olympic Committee made the announcement after the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to back the city's attempt to bring the games back to the nation's second-largest city for the first time in nearly 45 years. Los Angeles hosted the Summer Olympics in 1932 and 1980. If the city wins the bid for the 2024 Games it will mark the first time in 28 years that a U.S. city will host the Summer Olympics.
"We are thrilled to be partnering with Los Angeles as our U.S. bid city for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” said Scott Blackmun, the CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee. “LA has the proven experience in hosting the Games, and knows how to deliver world-class events for athletes and an extraordinary experience for fans. Coupled with the city’s culture of creativity and innovation, we are confident LA can deliver an outstanding Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024.”
The announcement came weeks after Boston pulled out of contention to host the games when its mayor Marty Walsh refused to sign an Olympic host city agreement that reportedly relied on taxpayer funding for various costs related to the Games. At the time, Walsh indicated that he felt intense pressure from USOC to complete an agreement that may have placed taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in cost overruns, without receiving an opportunity to view some of the essential language within the contract.
In January, Boston was selected as the American bid host over Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, after submitting a $4.5 billion proposal. By comparison, it cost Russia a reported $51 billion to host the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, according to various reports, while the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics carried a $40 billion price tag. Los Angeles has reportedly proposed an environmentally-friendly plan in which all five of its primary venue clusters will be located with a half-hour of a state-of-the art Athletes' Village.
“LA is a truly Olympic city,” LA 2024 chairman Casey Wasserman said in a statement. “Olympism is deeply rooted in the culture here and it is part of our DNA. We live and breathe sport and this is reflected in the vast amount of sports infrastructure we already have. We are very fortunate to be in the position to have so many world-class venues available to us as it has allowed us to develop a sustainable plan that aligns with the city’s long term vision and the IOC’s Olympic Agenda 2020.”
Los Angeles launched its bid on Tuesday ahead of a September 15 deadline from the International Olympic Committee for individual nations to file candidacy paperwork. The election of the host city will be announced at an IOC session in Lima, Peru in September, 2017.