THE Commonwealth Games will die off if host cities follow Glasgow, Delhi and Manchester in spending hundreds of millions of pounds turning the event into a mini-Olympics, a leading international sports executive has warned.
Martin Snedden, who ran New Zealand's 2011 Rugby World Cup, said be believed the event, once called the Friendly Games to reflect its low-key status, needed to be reinvented if it is to survive. He said: "If they think that the event is going to continue on a similar track to the Olympics in terms of growth and each successive host city pouring in multi-million dollars into hosting the thing, they're almost guaranteeing the death of the event in due course.
"I love sport and I would struggle to remember what happened at the last Commonwealth Games other than Delhi seemed to make a real botched job of making it look like they were prepared."
Scotland hosted the Commonwealths in their old low-budget guise in Edinburgh in both 1970 and 1986 but has spent around half-a-billion on the same event in Glasgow this year.
The city's big pitch for the games - it was up against Abuja in Nigeria - was that it would not have to spend as much as many other potential hosts because it already had many of the venues and much of the infrastructure to deliver the new kind of high-end experience the Commonwealth Games Federation now wants.
However, Mr Snedden, aired concerns over the future of the event during a New Zealand Radio documentary broadcast this weekend.
New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland, had considered a bid for the 2018 Games but pulled out after its national government estimated it would lose about £300 million.
The 2018 Games will go to the Gold Coast in Australia, where almost twice as much as Glasgow is being spent.
New Zealand experts are not convinced by claims of economic activity generated.
Canterbury University sports economist Seamus Hogan told the programme: "Let's forget about fiddling the numbers by pretending there's some kind of spillover to the economy.
"Any time you see something justified because some consulting company has been commissioned to do a report showing an economic benefit, that means they don't think they'll be able to sell it on its value alone."
New Zealand Olympic Committee secretary general Kereyn Smith admitted the Commonwealth Games' public image took a hit as a result of the Delhi event.
"There's no doubt that it threatened the Commonwealth Games brand and credibility," she said. "However, four years later, the Glasgow team have really got things back on track.
"They have well exceeded their commercial targets, so what they have proven is that it is a product that people are interested in being involved with."
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