Marketing instructor predicts Olympic locales

Greg Dumont doesn't need a crystal ball to predict where the next Olympic Games will be held ... he has science on his side.

The University of Akron marketing instructor developed a model, as part of his doctoral dissertation, to discern which Olympic bidding criteria are most critical in differentiating a winning bid from competing alternatives. To do this, he analyzed competing bids for the 2008 Beijing Games, 2010 Vancouver Games, 2012 London Games, 2014 Sochi Games, 2016 Rio Games and 2018 Winter Games. His model accurately predicts the winning bid in five of the six aforementioned Olympiads while also predicting the voting results for the 2010, 2014, 2016 and 2018 Olympics in rank order.

The International Olympic Committee's July 6 announcement that Pyeongchang, South Korea, will be the host nation for the 2018 Winter Games further validated Dumont's model.

"The IOC's announcement both confirmed what my model predicted and justifies my confidence in this research as I prepare to defend my dissertation," Dumont says. "Outside of South Korea, I was probably the most excited individual to hear the IOC announcement.

"As more and more countries express interest in competing for the right to stage/host a finite number of global mega events, I am committed to revising the model in an effort to better understand the unique bidding process of the FIFA World Cup, Commonwealth Games, political conventions and the like," he says.