The International Olympic Committee and Site Decisions: The Case of the 2002 Winter Olympics

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Abstract
By means of an empirical survey, this article analyzes the decision-making process of the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in order to establish how they evaluated the bids to host the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. Three bid-winning models were identified. These consisted of offers from a total of seven bid-winning subjects: the Olympic village for accommodating the athletes, transportation facilities for all the visitors to the Games, the sports arenas, the finances of the Games, telecommunications, information technology, and the media center. Offers, which had little or nothing to do with the Olympic Winter Games, were on average graded “important” by the majority of the IOC members. However, offers that referred to the performance of the Games were considered, on average, more important than other offers. The individual IOC members did not share the interest of the IOC in bids offering cultural events, environmental care (opening, closing, and prize) ceremonies, a youth camp for young athletes, and accommodation for all the athletes in a single Olympic village. No bid messenger was considered “very influential” by a majority of the IOC members in their bid choices. “The visits of the IOC members to the bid cities” was the only channel for communicating bid offers that was perceived as “very influential” by a majority of the IOC members. Every fourth IOC member stated that it was not important to their bid selection that the bidders followed IOC's bidding rules. Fifteen bid offers (17%) were evaluated differently by the IOC members due to their cultural and demographic differences.

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