Dual Olympic Bids Approved For Paris And Los Angeles

It's official, the 2024 Olympics are coming to Paris – and four years later they'll be in Los Angeles in the first "double allocation" of the Olympic contests in modern history.

The International Olympic Committee announced it had approved the allocations — the result of a three-way deal — by vote Wednesday.

"This historic double allocation is a'win-win-win' situation for the city of Paris, the city of Los Angeles and the IOC," said IOC President Thomas Bach following the vote to approve the decision.

The Associated Press reports that Bach declared the vote unanimous after a "show of hands" count raised no objections.

The vote, in addition to setting the Olympic schedule for 11 years, breaks the IOC's tradition of selecting host cities one at a time. Initially agreed to over the summer, the three-way deal followed an exodus of other bidders for the 2024 games, reported Ben Bergen, of member station KPCC, in June.

"Few governments want to risk the billions in cost overruns that have become synonymous with recent Olympics. That's why the IOC is considering awarding dual bids," said Bergen at time.

And once the IOC was looking at just two bidders, as NPR's Tom Goldman reported, it was down to a matter "of who'd get what."

"Paris said it didn't want to host in 2028. 2024 will be the 100th anniversary of the 1924 Paris summer games. ... LA sent signals that it was open to going second, " Tom told Morning Edition last month.

Los Angeles, host city to the 1932 and 1984 summer games, conceded the 2024 Olympics to Paris, Tom goes on, and has been promised $180 million by the IOC for doing that.

The AP adds this will be the third Olympics for both cities, and the Los Angeles games will be the first Summer Olympiad in the U.S. since 1996.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.