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GAY GAMES IX SITE
SELECTION
MEDIA
ALERT - Live
Announcement – Press Conference
Federation of Gay Games To Announce Host of 2014 Gay Games IX on Tuesday, 29
September 2009. Boston, Cleveland, and Washington, DC are finalists
for 2014 Gay Games.
Read the Media Advisory.
English version >>
Photos of city
representatives and city logos for all three bidding cities are
included in this single ZIP File.
Click here to download the (11 MB) file.
Public bid documents are at the bottom of this page.
Click HERE.
Dear FGG
Delegates, Directors, Volunteers, and Honorary Life Members:
The Site
Selection Committee is pleased to announce we have received
three exciting bids to host Gay Games IX in 2014. These bids
have come from the following cities:
Boston
– presented by Boston 2014
Cleveland – presented by Cleveland
Synergy Foundation
Washington, D.C. – presented by
Metropolitan Washington
Gaymes, Inc.
The bid
documents can be viewed on WebEx (see links below). We have
also provided a scorecard there to help compare the bids to one
another. Other comparison documents will be made available soon.
You may
submit your questions to bidders for clarification about
their bids on WebEx in the "Discussions" section. There is a
forum for each bidder, as well as a forum for questions
addressed to all bidders and another for your questions to us
about the site selection process (see links below),
We have
prepared some explanatory notes about changes you'll be noting
in these bid books compared to past bids (see below).
Paul White
has organised discussion threads in these forums. Please post to
the correct thread. The deadline for submitting questions is 30
April 2009. It is likely that initial questions will be sent to
bidders before that deadline, so feel free to post your
questions starting now
After this
question and answer period, the FGG Site Inspection team will
visit each city (probably in August). Bidders will make their
final presentation and at our 2010 Annual Meeting in Cologne,
scheduled to take place beginning 26 September 2009. At this
meeting, the vote for the host of Gay Games IX will take place
(29 September). The list of eligible voters based on current
bylaws will be published soon, but all members of the Gay Games
family are invited to post their questions and provide feedback
on these bids.
Darl Schaaff and
Denis Sneyers
Co-chairs Site
Selection Committee
Email:
FGGbids@gaygames.org
Note: you will have to log on to your WebEx account
for access to these documents and discussion areas
Request for Proposals – Main document and appendices
Boston Bidbook
Questions to Boston
Cleveland Bidbook
Questions to Cleveland
Washington, DC Bidbook
Questions to Washington, DC
Questions to all Bidders
"Scorecard" used for Gay Games VIII bidding
NOTE ON
REGISTRATION SYSTEM
One thing you won't see discussed much in the Bid Books are
the Bidders' proposals for registration systems. This is because
the FGG intends to provide hosts with a registration system.
Among the advantages of this is that the system can be passed on
to the host of Gay Games X 2018, or offered for use by FGG
member organisations for their own events.
NOTE ON
LICENCE FEE
You will on the other hand see
references to the FGG licence fee. Note that for Gay Games IX,
the entire licence fee will be paid to the FGG on the basis of
the number of paid registrations. The exact fee schedule and
calendar will be the subject of discussions with the Host you
choose in Cologne. Note that for purposes of budgeting, a figure
of approximately 400,000 USD is used. This fee will in fact be
variable, depending on the number of registrations. This is part
of the FGG's desire to share the risk of hosting the Gay Games
with our Host organisation.
NOTE ON GAY
GAMES IX SPORTS PROGRAMMES
We would like to take advantage of this message to remind
you all that these are the first bids under the Sports Inclusion
and Retention policy adopted by the FGG Assembly at the 2007 AM
in San Francisco. Details of this policy are in the RFP document
which you'll find on WebEx, but in short, the policy:
-- retains the
list of Core Sports and Additional Sports
-- breaks down
Aquatics into its component elements, explicitly assigning
Synchronised Swimming to the Core Sports list and Open Water
Swim to the Additional Sports list
-- separates the
Racquetball/Squash option into two distinct sports (i.e., both
sports are on the Core Sports list independently)
-- allows bidders
to remove up to 6 of these 24 sports from their bid program
--
encourages bidders to request the inclusion of new sports before
bids are submitted (as did Cleveland
with Rodeo)
During the
preparation of bids, it was observed that there were sports that
had been offered as recently as Chicago
but that did not appear on the Additional
Sports list. A decision was made to consider that these sports
would be treated as Additional Sports with no special request
needed (the case of Darts and Flag Football in the current
bids).
Why was
this policy proposed and adopted?
The FGG had
struggled for many years with the desire of representatives of
many sports to see their sport on the list of Core Sports, so as
to be sure of finding their sport at each edition of the Gay
Games.
At the same
time, it appeared that the rough limit of about 30 sports was
about the right number that allowed for successful management of
the sports programme by a host.
We also
knew that we wanted totally new sports to be offered from time
to time in the Gay Games.
These goals
were not compatible. And as the process went on, new goals
appeared, including offering a response to criticism that the
FGG was too controlling and was imposing the entire sports
programme on hosts, along with a desire from many in the FGG to
imagine the Gay Games being hosted in parts of the world where
certain venues/support groups were just not available.
We noted
that other organisations, such as the IOC, faced the same
issues, and looked at how they tried to resolve them.
We
considered any number of solutions based on the notion of
removing certain Core Sports and replacing them with others.
Most of these solutions failed because they required far more
data and staff-hours than we had available, and because they
tried to apply objective formulas for some very subjective
judgments.
The policy
adopted in the end, described above, turned the question around,
and focused the question not on what the FGG wanted hosts to do,
but on what hosts were able to do for the Gay Games. It gives
bidders a bit of flexibility to adjust the programme to suit
their needs, their focus, and their ability to produce
successful Gay Games with the best venues and the best local
support. In the current cycle, we have seen bidder Cleveland
take advantage of the new inclusion procedure
to add Rodeo to its programme. And we've seen other bidders take
advantage of SIR to remove some Core Sports from their
programme.
The policy
adopted was the least radical: all past Core Sports remain on
the list for future bidders to use. No new Core Sports have been
added. Once a Host is selected, we'll need to have a look at how
we move forward for Gay Games X, but for the moment, the current
policy seems to be working well, with three strong sports
programmes on offer.
At the same
time, we required bidders to explain how they came up with their
programme, and how the overall programme reflected the FGG goals
of Gay Games that were open to all, with gender parity,
accessibility, etc. Among the bidders, some have provided quite
good responses. Others are not as explicit as we might like. But
all have had to go beyond simply ticking of the boxes on a list
provided by the FGG and really think about what they want their
sports programme to look like.
What does
this mean for your organisation?
Clearly, there
are member organisations that will choose to reject a bid
because their sport is not on the bidder's programme. But we all
need to keep in mind that our first goal is that the entire Gay
Games offered by a host be a success, so that there will be many
more editions of the Gay Games in the future, ones in which a
bidder can choose your sport. Each delegate will have to make a
choice at Site Selection according to the procedures established
in the organisation they represent, but always keeping the
general interest in mind.
What's
next?
As said
above, we'll need to review the effectiveness of this policy
when Site Selection is over. More to the point, we mustn't
forget that once a Host is chosen, they can request the addition
of new sports. Cologne has added
existing sports Field Hockey, Team Handball, and Sailing, and
following a tight vote in Sports Committee, received approval
for Sport Shooting. The Host of GGIX can do the same, again with
the approval of the FGG. And if they do so, the same issues of
quality venue, knowledgeable local organisers, and contribution
to the overall programme will again need to be taken into
account.
The Federation Media Contact
Press inquiries only may be directed to:
Kelly Stevens, Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Officer of Communications
E-mail: kstevens@gaygames.org
Skype phone ID: kelly.stevensusa
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