What happens if no country or city puts in a bid to host the Olympics/Commonwealth Games/Soccer World Cup etc.? Does each event have a ‘default location’ - for example, would the Olympics automatically go to Athens?
This might seem like an unlikely situation, but I believe Melbourne was the only city who bothered to put in a bid for the 2006 Commonwealth Games, so we automatically won (yay…or something).
Offhand, I’d say it’s about as likely as asking what would happen if there was a presidential election and no one decided to be a candidate. There’s always been more candidates than opportunities, so the issue has been having to pick one.
But let’s say for some reason that no city wanted to host the Olympics. We’ll assume that Zeus manifests himself and declares that he will destroy whatever city is chosen (after all, we want to keep this within the realm of possibility). My guess would be that the Olympic Committee, faced with a sudden dearth of host cities, would cancel the event. What would be their alternative? Force some city to host the Olympics by military force?
Perhaps they would hold the various events in various cities, on the theory that while a city might mind hosting every event but a city wouldn’t mind renting a single facility for a single event.
In 1984, Los Angeles didn’t have any opposition to hosting the Olympics (or at least anyone serious). Most of the population was less than excited to see it coming. I don’t know if the city could pull it off again. LA is having enough trouble trying to hold the Democratic Convention in the summer now.