How the Awarding Process Changed
Facing a shortage of candidates rather than a surplus, the process was rebuilt in two directions. The first was to reduce what hosting demands. Requirements shifted toward using existing and temporary venues instead of building new ones, allowing events to be spread across a wider region or even across borders where the facilities already exist, and dropping the expectation that a host must construct a complete purpose-built park. This removes the most overrun-prone category of spending, which is the new specialist venue with no afterlife.
The second change was to the selection mechanism itself. Instead of a contested campaign ending in a single vote between rival cities, the process moved toward continuous, confidential dialogue with interested parties, shaping a proposal before it is ever public and then confirming a preferred host. That has clear advantages: it avoids expensive losing campaigns, it lets a city test the idea without a public commitment, and it produces plans built around what a place already has. It also concentrates influence in a negotiation rather than a contest, and it makes the process considerably harder for outsiders to scrutinise, which is a real cost even if the alternative was worse.
