Los Angeles is currently hosting the Special Olympics with 7,000 participants from 170 countries, 3,000 coaches, 30,000 volunteers, in 25 sports, and little fuss.
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Add all the lack of palpable support by political leaders at the state and local level, and poll numbers hovering around 40 percent approval, IMO, the Boston bid gets pulled, and the USOC will either go with no bid for 2024, or spend the money its budgeted for developing the IOC bid documents on another city. IIRC, the California legislature said it would cover up to $500 million of cost overruns for either San Francisco or Los Angeles.
The Special Olympics require basically no commitments. They just happen. Sure, all the athletes are there, but ask it this way - have you heard one word about the Special Olympics and what it took to host them? If ESPN wasn't televising them, would anyone know they were going on?
It wouldn't be much different in Boston. It's the non-athletic aspects of a Summer Games - the infrastructure, the need for iconic venue designs, etc. that drive up the cost. Those are also the elements that provide the benefits if done right.
Los Angeles is no more prepared to be a host than Boston is. Its transit is lacking to nonexistent in areas around proposed venues, so everything would need to be freeway-based again. The nicer areas have legendary NIMBYs - why do you think the NFL is looking at Carson and Inglewood?
The venue plan and budget are also behind where Boston's were in January, unless there's been a secret planning process for the last six months in anticipation of screwing us. That's not something that gets resolved overnight just because LA is bigger. This is California. Every one of their venue plans will be CEQA'd to hell the moment it's announced.
Most of all, the "we're so excited to bail out Boston" angle only works for so long, because at some point people in CA will have the same misgivings as we did, and we will just have proven how much damage those misgivings can do.
BTW, Treating the USOC like the sensible party that was willing to do something charitable for poor little Boston but had to make the tough call in the end is a very interesting reading of this story. The USOC picked Boston (and since it's all California people, it must not have wanted to) because it had the most developed plan. DC, LA, and SF came in with concepts and half-baked schemes. Since then, the USOC has contributed nothing positive while endlessly chipping away with silly gag orders, redacted documents, damaging soundbites and leaked information.
I would be very hesitant if I were LA to do any business with the USOC at this point. Boston 2024 often hasn't looked like it knew what it was doing, but at least they're trying to fix that. The USOC has no idea what hosting an Olympics takes, no idea how to sell that to the local public, nothing. The leaders seem to be hiding in a corner helplessly, and the boosters for other cities are chomping at the bit. There isn't an ounce of professionalism in the lot.