The cities of Amsterdam, Limerick, London, Orlando, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo qualified to bid for the 2018 Gay Games.
By Federation of Gay Games – San Francisco, CA, USA
The international Federation of Gay Games (FGG) announced today the results of the first phase of bidding for Gay Games X. Seven cities on three continents expressed an interest in bidding by submitting a response to FGG’s Request for Information. Among those responding were the first potential bids from Latin America.
The seven cities are: Amsterdam, Limerick, London, Orlando, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Officer for Site Selection Dennis Sneyers expressed the pleasure of the FGG in receiving so many expressions of interest, and of such high quality: “The FGG has never received seven expressions of interest, and these RFI responses go well beyond a simple expression of interest. This is the first time we have used a preliminary step of a Request for Information, and we are very satisfied with this procedure which allows for potential bidders to learn more about what the process entails. Bidding is long, demanding, and has a cost that any interested party needs to take into account. After a review of the responses, we consider that all bidders are able to continue the bidding process.”
FGG co-president Kurt Dahl added: “We consider the choice of a host for the Gay Games one of the Federation’s most important tasks. We wish the bidding groups courage as they take the next steps in this process. Only three of these groups will make it to the site selection meeting in late 2013 in Cleveland, the host of the next edition of the Gay Games in 2014 [www.gg9cle.com], where FGG member organizations will choose one of them as the host of Gay Games X.”
The next step in the process is the release of the Request for Proposal document which details the requirements for bidders’ documents, which will be due in February 2013. Sneyers noted: “We are confident that we will have the satisfying and challenging task of choosing among a number of highly qualified bidders.
We will have a first contact with bidders at our annual general assembly in August in Sofia, Bulgaria, where potential bidders have been invited to attend an information session.” View the bidders’ responses and follow news of Gay Games X bidding at http://2018.gaygames.org.
