Baku, Doha, Istanbul, Madrid, Rome and Tokyo tabled bids by the deadline of midnight on Thursday, and the IOC will vote on the winning city on September 7, 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. However, the first hurdle for the bids to overcome will be in May 2012, when the IOC will announce the candidate cities for the Games. Baku and Doha both tabled bids for the 2016 Olympics, eventually awarded to Rio de Janeiro, but were eliminated from the tender before the final vote.
In January 2013, the candidates’ bid dossiers will be handed over to the IOC and the governing body’s Evaluation Committee will visit each city between February and April of that year. The IOC will then publish a report on each bid, with candidates to be invited to the IOC’s headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland to brief IOC members on their bids ahead of the final vote.
The IOC, in a statement, confirmed the applicants for the 2020 Games. “The International Olympic Committee is pleased to announce that six cities have been put forward by their respective National Olympic Committees (NOCs) to apply to host the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in 2020,” read the statement. “The cities, in alphabetical order, are: Baku (Azerbaijan), Doha (Qatar), Istanbul (Turkey), Madrid (Spain), Rome (Italy) and Tokyo (Japan).”
Various bookmakers have installed Tokyo as the early favourite for the Games followed by Madrid – which also missed out in the 2016 Games tender – and European rival Rome, which was the first city to confirm a bid for the 2020 Olympics.
