The settlement comes after Alberta withdrew its bid for the 2030 Commonwealth Games, raising the question of whether the 2022 edition may have been the last. Archive photo via Swimming Australia
August 21st, 2023
The Australian state of Victoria will pay $243 million (AUD $380 million) to pull out as the host of the 2026 Commonwealth Games due to costs that could have exceeded $5 billion ($7 billion AUD), more than twice the original budget.
“It is in fact at least $6 billion AUD and could be as high as $7 billion AUD — and I cannot stand here and say to you that I have any confidence that even the $7 billion AUD number would appropriately and adequately fund these Games,” said Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria, when the state announced its withdrawal last month.
The settlement comes after the Canadian province of Alberta withdrew its bid for the 2030 Commonwealth Games, raising the question of whether the 2022 Commonwealth Games may have been the last. It cost less than $1 billion to hold last year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England. The statement from Victoria’s 2026 Commonwealth Games settlement said the affected parties “agreed that the multi-hub regional model was more expensive to host than the traditional models.”
The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) said it was willing to postpone the 2026 edition by a year to accommodate a new host, but that might not be enough incentive to attract a suitor given the growing budget concerns. A former top official in the organization told The Telegraph that “the Games brand is taking a major hit to its reputation.” The source added that the CGF needs to take “immediate and radical action” to “save the event.”
“If the Games are to continue, and there are no guarantees right now, they will need to look very different and clearly they will be far smaller in scale and cost,” the former CGF executive said. “It looks increasingly likely that Birmingham 2022 will be the last Games on a major multi-sport scale given the lack of appetite from Governments to host the competition in its current format.”
Craig Phillips, the CEO of Commonwealth Games Australia, blamed the Victorian government for financial mismanagement.
“The Victorian government willfully ignored recommendations to move events to purpose-built stadia in Melbourne and in fact remained wedded to proceeding with expensive temporary venues in regional Victoria,” Phillips said.
Andrew says that the government will still build the sporting facilities that it had promised to regional communities.
Before Gold Coast 2018, Australia hosted the Commonwealth Games in 1938 (Sydney), 1962 (Perth), 1982 (Brisbane), and 2006 (Melbourne).
When it was announced last April that Victoria would host the 2026 Commonwealth Games, the plan was to divide the action across the state’s five regions: Melbourne, Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, and Gippsland. Andrews announced that instead of allocating money towards the Games, Victoria will build a permanent sporting facility and will invest in more affordable housing in the state.
If they can’t find a city in the Commonwealth willing to host the Games just ask Dubai or Doha. Those sheikhs seem to want to hold any sporting event in the world that they can get their hands on.
Democracy failing once again. This only kept going because Dan bribed the country folk for reelection. Now he’s gonna scramble a few more million to his buddies in industry and make out like the bandits always do. Shame.
Just now realized I completely missed the 2022 CWGs. Forgot it was still a thing. Must do a little digging to see how we (Canada) did.
Has anyone heard anymore on the Gold Coast Mayor offering to pick up the pieces of this failed Victorian Comm Games and utilise the same facilities used in the 2018 games?
I hadn’t heard that. But also the state government would need to agree and I doubt they will considering they have an Olympics coming up
I saw in a recent article (I forget which) that Tom Tate thinks he can go ahead without state government approval.
The Gold Coast City Council couldn’t possibly afford to pay for just the logistics of everything, even if they didn’t have to spend a cent on venues.
Hey I guess we’ll see what happens
Comm Games Federation has a spare $380mill that they could offer in assistance for Gold Coast to host it.
Qld premier should love to take another sporting event from Victoria.
Yes- he said if the National Govt funded it he would host…BUT the National Govt were never funding the Victorian hosting…..so not happening…
When is Australia going to have its own citizen as head of state?
Unfortunately, not for a while. Only 8 out of 44 referenda since Federation have succeeded. The only ones that succeeded were generally on non-controversial topics (eg High Court judges retirement age of 70), apart from in 1967 when a referendum about giving the Federal Government the power to legislate with respect to the Aboriginal people and to allow Aboriginal people to be counted in the census was passed. The question of a republic in Australia is a controversial topic (IMO it shouldn’t be, but it is). It was defeated in 1999 and given how the Labor government is struggling with the current referendum (the Aboriginal Voice to Parliament), I wouldn’t bet on them having another go at a republic any… Read more »
There is an assistant minister for the Republic at the moment….I just hope it happens in my lifetime.
If it were up to me, I’d cancel all these Fugazi meets (Commonwealth Games, LEN Championships, Pan Pacs, etc) and just host the World Championships every summer except the Olympic year.
The non-Olympics, non-world championships years are always a huge letdown for me.
Single sports tournaments are not (relatively) expensive.
It’s the multi sports tournaments that are awfully expensive.
World Cup football is very expensive if the stadia and infrastructure aren’t already to standard.
The Commonwealth Games bid by Comrade Dan was merely a cynical ploy to win the regional vote in the last state election by promising country towns that they would get to host certain events. It was unfeasible to begin with and he knew it, but his government got to stay in power, so what does it matter to him?
So Dan Andrews was repeatedly told his model would be too expensive, forced everyone to keep spending money on his model, and then abandoned the whole thing when it turned out to be expensive. What a numpty.
Probably could have almost run the games in Melbourne for the amount they’ve already spent on it which has amounted to nothing but an international embarrassment.
It’s actually insane how much leeway this guy has been given to do insane things year after year.
Victoria is very “left vs right” so his supporters would never criticise him no matter what. I vote for the Greens and even I would almost prefer LNP in Victoria to Andrews
I note you say almost prefer. The Coalition is an absolute dumpster fire in Victoria. Pesutto is relatively moderate, but when he took over after 2 disastrous elections in a row, the party almost rebelled against him when he tried to expel an anti-vax, anti trans activist who appeared at a rally with neo-Nazis.
Andrews never had any intention of having Victoria host the Commonwealth Games in the first place. That was just a cynical ploy to win the regional vote in the last state election by promising country towns that they would get to host certain events.
Just 1 issue; 3/4 of those regional centres are already Labour voting