When the LA 2028 Organizing Committee launched its new website in September 2020, it removed the three “candidature questionnaire” files (collectively known as the “bid book”) that it submitted to the International Olympic Committee in its campaign to host the Games. These books are still available in the IOC’s archives, but in classic ‘we’re going to make this awkward for you to download’ fashion.
Here, we’ve compiled the three-stage bid book alongside the earlier version of the bid submitted to the United States Olympic Committee in 2014 (a bid that LA initially ‘lost’ to Boston). The differences are interesting. Perhaps — in light of growing public scrutiny of the Olympics’ track record of displacing and gentrifying low-income communities — the communication team brought in to polish the bid book for the IOC felt the initial bid’s language around “new neighborhoods” and a “new LA” gave too much of the game away. Perhaps they thought this image (below) of LA’s courthouse and other government buildings turned into giant billboards for Olympic corporate sponsors was a bit too on the nose.
The bid books submitted to the IOC are more subtle in their messaging, but still ultimately propose a corporatized and militarized Olympic City tailored to sponsors’ needs. Meanwhile, the Olympic project is already accelerating displacement and gentrification in Los Angeles.
Lastly, here are the IOC’s evaluation reports of LA’s Candidature Files.