Los Angeles, Paris will host Summer Games in 2024, 2028 after Olympic Committee vote

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has decided to award the 2024 and 2028 Summer Games at the same time this fall — an unprecedented move that clears a path for Los Angeles and Paris to earn hosting duties.

The IOC will officially reveal the next two Olympic sites in September, but the only true candidates are the aforementioned metropolises. The only choice left to be made is determining which city will host first. IOC members approved the plan to announce dual Olympiads by a unanimous vote Tuesday morning.

“This is a golden opportunity,” said IOC President Thomas Bach. “It is hard to imagine something better.”

The vote starts the clock on the discussion between the Committee and delegates from the two cities. If the three sides cannot come to an agreement, only the 2024 Games will be awarded in 2017. Early returns suggest the French capital will get first opportunity to host, especially given the flexible nature of the Americans’ Olympic pitch.

“LA 2024 has never been only about LA or 2024,” bid Chairman Casey Wasserman said in June. “Even when the issue of a dual award for the 2024 and 2028 Games was initially raised, we didn’t say it’s ‘LA first’ or it’s ‘now or never’ for LA ... It has always been our contention that LA 2024 had to make as much sense for the Olympic Movement as it did for the people of LA.”

This won’t be the first hosting gig for either city. Los Angeles set the modern standard for a profitable Olympics in 1984, taking advantage of its existing infrastructure and a multitude of corporate sponsorships to monetize the greatest spectacle in amateur sport. Peter Ueberroth’s ability to secure private funding for the event made the 23rd Olympiad the first in more than 50 years to make money.

It was a rare win/win situation for the Games and their host city — though McDonald’s wasn’t as lucky.

Paris will host the Olympics for the first time since 1924, though France played host more recently when the Winter Games came to Albertville in 1992. That post-WWI came at a significant loss to the country — more than five million Francs. The Paris delegation will hope to avoid that kind of investment in 2024 or 2028, though returns from recent Games have been devastating.

Massive costs and rushed construction cast a pall over recent events. The 2004 Games in Athens cost Greece more than $14 billion in losses and played a role in the country’s debt crisis that followed years later. Cost overruns have put Russia’s cost of hosting the 2014 event in Sochi at $51 billion, though that number has been refuted. Brazil got off with a relatively low $12 billion tab (officially), but now Rio de Janeiro is left with vacant venues, mounting debt, and the lingering stress that things didn’t go all so well even when these Olympics “improvements” were brand new.

The mounting losses associated with hosting have left a limited pool of potential hosts for future Games. The bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics was limited to just two hosts before the IOC chose a return to Beijing — who had hosted the 2008 Summer Games — over Almaty, Kazahkstan.

Selecting Los Angeles and Paris, two major cities with the infrastructure to limit building costs and attract spectators, is a step toward erasing the financial stigma that has enveloped the event. L.A. only had to build two new venues to host the Games in 1984, and while the city may incur more costs this time around, its track record lends reason for optimism. Paris doesn’t have the same kind of experience, but officials there are confident they can avoid the pitfalls that have doomed prior hosts.

The next two Summer Games hosts have been set, and they’ll take place in two of the greatest cities in the world. All we need to know now is who’s hosting when — and how much they’ll sink into three weeks of the greatest athletic competition known to man.