Why the Commonwealth Games Need a New Hosting Model
The Commonwealth Games remain one of the world’s most valuable multisport events.
They bring together athletes from 74 nations and territories, provide an important international platform for smaller countries, and have become a world leader in the integration of Para sport. At their best, the Games represent friendship, inclusion and cooperation at a time when all three are badly needed.
The problem is not the purpose of the Commonwealth Games.
The problem is the inherited model used to deliver them.
For more than a century, multisport Games have largely followed the Olympic model: select a host city, bring almost every sport and athlete to that city, construct or upgrade the required facilities, hold an enormous sporting celebration and then leave the host government to manage the consequences.
It is a model developed for a much smaller sporting programme and a very different world.
As more sports, events and athletes have been added, the cost of staging the Games has grown dramatically. Each additional sport brings far more than another medal ceremony. It requires competition and training facilities, specialist equipment, technical officials, accommodation, transport, security, medical services, broadcasting, technology, volunteers and test events.
The costs do not increase neatly or gradually. They compound.
More sports mean more athletes. More athletes require more accommodation, catering and transport. More venues require more security, maintenance, technology and staffing. All of these elements must be delivered against an immovable deadline.
The result is a hosting model that has become increasingly difficult for governments to justify.
Building for the party
The fundamental mistake is that host cities are often required to build for several weeks of peak international demand rather than several decades of realistic local demand.
A facility may be technically excellent and still be completely inappropriate for the community expected to maintain it.
The important question is not simply whether a venue can be constructed. It is whether that venue can be programmed, staffed, maintained, marketed and eventually renewed after the Games have finished.
Too often, those questions are treated as matters to be resolved later.
The opening ceremony is televised around the world. The facilities look magnificent. Politicians, administrators and sporting officials celebrate the successful delivery of the event.
Then the party ends.
The spectators leave. The broadcasters dismantle their equipment. The organising committee is wound up. The international officials move on to the next event.
The buildings remain.
So do the electricity bills, maintenance costs, security requirements, staffing problems and expensive specialist equipment.
This is the real legacy test—and it is a test many host cities struggle to pass.
Victoria was a warning
The withdrawal of Victoria from the 2026 Commonwealth Games should not be dismissed as an isolated political failure.
It demonstrated how quickly confidence can collapse when the scope of a Games, its delivery structure and the government’s financial capacity are not properly aligned.
The Victorian Auditor-General found that the decision to bid for, plan and then withdraw from the Games cost more than A$589 million without producing any discernible public benefit.
The original budget was unrealistically low. Later cost estimates were disputed and may have been overstated. The business case did not provide a convincing basis for concluding that the public benefits would exceed the costs.
The exact amount the Games might eventually have cost can be debated.
The larger lesson cannot.
A hosting model that cannot be credibly scoped, costed and explained to the public is inherently fragile.
Host scarcity is therefore not simply a marketing problem for the Commonwealth Games. It is a risk-allocation problem.
Governments are being asked to accept infrastructure obligations, uncertain operating costs, political exposure and immovable delivery deadlines. Yet many of the technical requirements and pressures to expand the sports programme originate elsewhere in the international sports system.
Glasgow showed another way
Glasgow 2026 may prove to be far more important than originally expected.
Following Victoria’s withdrawal, Glasgow did not attempt to recreate the size and complexity of Birmingham 2022 or even Glasgow 2014. It delivered a deliberately smaller Games using existing facilities.
More than 3,000 athletes competed in 10 sports, including six integrated Para sports, across four established venue clusters. Approximately 434,000 spectators attended during the 11-day competition.
The reported delivery cost was about £160 million—roughly one-third of the cost of Glasgow 2014.
There were compromises. Some sports were not included. Fewer athletes received the opportunity to compete. Some leading international stars did not attend, and television exposure varied between markets.
Nevertheless, Glasgow demonstrated something important:
The identity of the Commonwealth Games can survive a reduction in scale.
The Games did not stop being the Commonwealth Games simply because fewer sports were included or because new stadiums were not constructed.
Glasgow showed that scale is a design choice.
The quality of the Games should not be measured by the number of permanent buildings commissioned before the opening ceremony. It should be measured by the quality of competition, the experience of athletes, the integration of Para sport, the response of spectators, the reach of the event and the lasting value created for the host community.
Papua and the post-Games hangover
The consequences of the traditional hosting model are visible well beyond the Olympic and Commonwealth Games.
Indonesia’s National Sports Week, known as PON, follows a similar model. A province is selected to host a large national multisport event and is then required to provide the facilities necessary for the programme.
PON XX was held in Papua in 2021.
For Papua, the event created considerable pride and delivered sporting infrastructure on a scale the province had never previously possessed. International-standard stadiums, aquatic facilities, shooting venues, indoor arenas, hockey fields and cricket grounds were constructed or upgraded.
The problem came afterwards.
By July 2025, the Papua Youth and Sports Office reported that nine former PON venues under its direct management required approximately Rp14 billion each year in maintenance. The aquatic venue alone required more than Rp3 billion annually.
At the same time, revenue generated from the venues remained well below the government’s target.
By 2026, the provincial government was reducing electrical loads and dividing facilities into different operating categories—including event venues, training facilities and facilities effectively held on standby—in an attempt to reduce costs.
These facilities were not necessarily badly built. Nor were they all completely unused.
The deeper problem was that construction funding had created buildings without simultaneously creating the operating systems needed to sustain them.
Successful sports facilities require much more than concrete and equipment. They need competent management, recurring budgets, trained technical staff, active sports organisations, community programmes, event calendars, transport access, marketing and commercial activity.
Without those elements, a government inherits buildings rather than a functioning sport system.
I have spent much of the past year examining these facilities and considering how some of them might be reactivated with minimal public funding. The experience has reinforced a view I have held for decades:
No multisport event should be permitted to leave behind a venue that the host cannot realistically operate after the event.
The Games should fit the host
Commonwealth Sport has already recognised many of these problems through its Games Reset Framework.
The framework seeks to reduce traditional hosting costs by at least 60 per cent, prioritise existing venues, avoid unlimited government guarantees, allow greater flexibility in the sports programme and encourage co-hosting between cities, regions and countries.
These are important reforms.
But the logic can be taken further.
The next step should be to redesign not only where the Games are held, but how the competition pathway itself is structured.
The principle should be simple:
The Games should fit the host. The host should no longer be required to rebuild itself to fit the Games.
A Networked Commonwealth Games
One possible alternative is a Networked Commonwealth Games.
Under this model, qualification and selected early rounds would be distributed among established venues across the Commonwealth. The principal host would then stage a compact finals festival containing the opening and closing ceremonies, integrated Para sport, flagship competitions and the final stages of selected sports.
Some major sports could still be staged in full where appropriate facilities already exist.
Other sports might bring eight teams, 16 competitors, or semifinal and final fields to the principal host rather than transporting every preliminary participant to one city.
Qualification events would not be treated as disconnected preliminaries. They would become formally branded Commonwealth Games pathway events, operating under shared competition, broadcast, integrity and presentation standards.
This would allow more Commonwealth countries and territories to participate in hosting without accepting the full financial liability of the Games.
A smaller country might host a regional qualification event in one or two sports. A country with a strong existing velodrome could host cycling qualification. An established shooting centre could host shooting. Regional team-sport competitions could determine the final eight teams travelling to the main Games.
The principal host would retain the central festival and Games identity, but its accommodation, transport, training and venue requirements would be significantly reduced.
The result would not necessarily be a smaller Commonwealth sporting system.
It could be a larger and more inclusive one.
More countries would host meaningful competition. More local spectators would see Commonwealth athletes. More volunteers would participate. More regional broadcasters and digital platforms could tell the Games story over a longer period.
The central Games would become smaller, but the Commonwealth-wide pathway would become larger.
FIFA has already demonstrated the principle
The FIFA World Cup is not directly comparable with the Commonwealth Games. Football requires broadly similar stadiums, while a multisport event requires many specialised venues.
Nevertheless, FIFA has demonstrated that a major event can retain a coherent identity while being distributed across many cities and even several countries.
The 2026 World Cup was staged across Canada, Mexico and the United States in 16 host cities.
The tournament did not cease to be a World Cup because it crossed national borders.
This does not mean the Commonwealth Games should be scattered without control. Excessive geographic spread can create additional travel, emissions and organisational complexity.
The lesson is more modest but still important:
A single-city footprint is not essential to the identity of a major sporting event.
Stop building facilities simply because a sport is included
Every sport proposed for a future Commonwealth Games should be accompanied by a clear Sport Inclusion Statement.
This should identify:
- the number of athletes and officials involved;
- competition and training requirements;
- temporary and permanent facility needs;
- operating costs;
- broadcast and spectator value;
- the qualification pathway;
- Para-sport integration; and
- realistic post-Games demand.
The consequences of inclusion must be visible before the programme is approved.
A sport should not automatically force a host to build a permanent venue simply because that sport has gained a place on the programme.
Where a sustainable facility does not already exist, the sport should be held in a temporary venue, relocated to an established specialist centre, included through distributed qualification, or excluded from that particular edition.
International Federations that seek inclusion should also be prepared to share responsibility for the technical and financial consequences of that inclusion.
Influence over the programme should be accompanied by responsibility for the costs created.
A Venue Legacy Gate
Every new or substantially expanded permanent venue should pass a Venue Legacy Gate before it is accepted as part of a Games plan.
The proposal should identify:
- the post-Games owner and operator;
- a credible ten-year programme of use;
- annual operating and maintenance budgets;
- lifecycle-renewal funding;
- trained management and technical staff;
- transport and community access;
- confirmed demand from clubs, schools and sports organisations;
- a conversion plan where Games capacity exceeds community demand; and
- a closure, relocation or demounting strategy for temporary facilities.
A venue should fail the test when its main justification is simply that the sport appears on the Games programme.
Prestige construction remains a future liability even where a government initially offers to pay for it.
Protect what makes the Commonwealth Games different
Reform should not weaken the distinctive character of the Commonwealth Games.
Integrated Para sport must remain central.
The athlete village experience, ceremonies, cultural programme, national identity and Friendly Games atmosphere must also be preserved.
A finals festival should therefore include more than medal matches. Team sports might bring eight finalists rather than two. Individual events might include 16 competitors. This would retain competitive legitimacy and allow athletes sufficient time to experience the Games environment.
The purpose is not to reduce the Commonwealth Games to a television studio containing only finals.
The purpose is to remove those parts of the central footprint that impose large costs without creating equivalent athlete, spectator or legacy value.
A practical path forward
A reform of this scale should be tested rather than imposed.
Commonwealth Sport could begin with an independent review of Glasgow 2026, examining costs, athlete experience, spectator response, Para integration, broadcast performance and venue expenditure.
A Networked Games Working Group could then bring together athletes, Commonwealth Games Associations, International Federations, broadcasters, venue operators, host governments, Para-sport representatives and public-finance specialists.
Three to five sports could be selected during the Ahmedabad 2030 cycle to test enhanced Commonwealth-branded qualification or distributed early rounds.
The results should be measured carefully:
- How much cost was avoided?
- Did athlete and spectator experience improve or decline?
- Did qualification remain fair?
- Did smaller Commonwealth members gain more opportunities?
- Did broadcasting become more difficult or more interesting?
- Did the central Games retain their atmosphere and identity?
Based on that evidence, the Networked Games could become a formal hosting option for 2034 and beyond.
The choice facing the Commonwealth
The Commonwealth Games do not need to become larger to remain important.
They need to become easier to host, harder to misuse as a justification for unnecessary construction, and more valuable to athletes and communities throughout the Commonwealth.
Glasgow demonstrated that the Games can be reduced without being emptied of meaning.
Papua demonstrates what can happen when buildings are created without a sustainable system for operating them.
Victoria demonstrated the political and financial danger of a hosting proposal that cannot be credibly scoped or costed.
The strategic choice is now straightforward:
Continue asking host cities to stretch themselves around the Games—or reshape the Games around the enduring needs and capacities of their hosts.
The Commonwealth Sport Movement is well placed to lead this change.
Its diversity, regional structure, integrated Para programme and willingness to rethink its traditional model give it an opportunity not merely to preserve a historic event, but to establish a more responsible model for multisport competition throughout the world.
The party will always end.
The measure of a successful Games is what remains when it does.
Selected references
Alm, J. (2016). “Hosting major sports events: The challenge of taming white elephants.” Leisure Studies, 35(5), 564–582.
Budzier, A., & Flyvbjerg, B. (2024). The Oxford Olympics Study 2024: Are cost and cost overrun at the Games coming down?
Commonwealth Sport. (2025). Collaborative Host Selection Process.
Commonwealth Sport. (2026). Games Reset Framework.
Dinas Olahraga dan Pemuda Provinsi Papua. (2025). Report on revenue and maintenance costs for former PON venues.
Papua Provincial Government. (2026). Report on operational adjustments for former PON facilities.
Victorian Auditor-General’s Office. (2024). Withdrawal from the 2026 Commonwealth Games.
