Swimmer Adam Peaty at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham Image: picture alliance / empics
The Australian Olympic Committee speaks of a “shame”, the association is “shocked”: In 2026 there should be no Commonwealth Games in Australia and New Zealand. Allegations are raised.
Two days before the start of the women’s soccer World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, the fifth continent is experiencing a sports-political disaster. Out of the blue, the Prime Minister of the state of Victoria canceled the Commonwealth Games planned for 2026 in Melbourne on Tuesday. Daniel Andrews gave the reason for the sharp rise in costs: “The whole thing doesn’t give us enough value for our money, it’s just a cost and not a profit.” The chair of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), Katie Sadleir, said the association was “shocked “. She was only informed eight hours before the public announcement. “We were left completely in the dark,” Sadleir said.
Christopher Hein
Business correspondent for South Asia/Pacific based in Singapore.
With his decision, Andrews alienated sports officials, business people and athletes, but also the government in Canberra. The governments of other Australian states very quickly declared that they did not want to step in for Victoria. This threatens to cancel the games for the first time since the end of the Second World War. The Prime Minister said in Melbourne in the morning that the cancellation of the games was “not a difficult decision”. The costs for the twelve-day competition have risen from the estimated 2.6 billion Australian dollars (around 1.6 billion euros) to more than seven billion Australian dollars (4.2 billion euros).
