Bargain basement Games bring bang for buck to Birmingham

BIRMINGHAM, England: More than a billion people are expected to watch the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony on Thursday, organisers say, and over 1.25 million tickets have been sold for the Jul 28-Aug. 8 multi-sport competition.

At a cost of around US$1 billion that is not bad bang for your buck, especially when compared to top-tier extravaganzas like an Olympics which could cost a host city between US$15 billion (2021 Tokyo Summer Games) to US$51 billion (2014 Sochi Winter Games).

Birmingham's ticket sales and viewership expectations may impress but when it comes to finding a host the "Friendly Games" has been a hard sell for the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF).

Britain's second city came to the CGF's rescue in 2017, stepping in as 2022 organisers after Durban, South Africa was stripped of the event for failing to deliver on promises made in its bid.

The search for a home for the 2026 Games was no less fraught, Victoria, Australia finally handed hosting duties in April three years after a decision was to be announced as bid-after-bid got cold feet and dropped out of the running.

Only once since 1998 (Delhi 2010) have the Games not been staged in Australia or Britain.

"I had no idea of the size and scale of this," said Birmingham 2022 chair John Crabtree, during the CGF congress on Tuesday. "A thousand days became a 1,000 days of sleepless nights.

"Whenever people asked 'How is the preparation going?' I would say - with hands behind my back and fingers crossed - 'We will be on time and on budget'.

"And here we are - we are on time, on budget and we are ready for you."

Held every four years, the Commonwealth Games were once seen as a major event on the sporting calendar but recently have struggled to retain relevance for