EXCLUSIVE
Pride WA have announced that they’ve put in a bid for Perth to host the 2030 Gay Games – the world’s largest and most celebrated LGBTQIA+ sporting event.
The Gay Games are hosted every four years and bring thousands of participants to the host city. The 2018 Paris event involved over 10,000 athletes.
Pride CEO Dr Lauren (Laurie) Butterly said now was the perfect time for Perth to be putting its hand up following a dramatic rise in the number of LGBTIQA+ sporting clubs in recent years.
“We are so excited to be bidding for the Gay Games 2030. Perth has an incredibly vibrant and diverse
LGBTQIA+ sports community that has grown and flourished in recent years.
“This coupled with Perth’s strong sporting culture, great weather and world-class sporting facilities makes Perth the right city, at the right time, for the Gay Games 2030.” Dr Butterly said.
“LGBTQIA+ sports are so much more than exercise; it is an incredible community. In fact, LGBTQIA+
sports is where many of us find our home – including me.
“Bidding for the Gay Games is a way of sharing our vibrant LGBTQIA+ sports community with the world and continuing to bring us all even closer together.” Dr Butterly added.
The Gay Games are a mass participation sporting event focused on inclusion, personal best and fun for
the LGBTQIA+ community and allies. The event offers multiple sports accompanied by a series of
arts, cultural and entertainment events.
With thousands of athletes and spectators coming from interstate and overseas, Pride WA say the Gay Games will be a huge win for the WA tourism economy and put Perth on the global LGBTQIA+ map.
The next Gay Games are to be hosted in Valencia, Spain in 2026. The last time the Gay Games were hosted in Australia was Sydney 2002.
The bidding process formally started in December 2023 with an Expression of Interest. There were initially 25 cities in the race. Today, the long list of 10 cities who will compete for the Gay Games 2030 has been publicly announced.
Alongside Perth is Adelaide, Auckland, Cape Town, Denver, Edmonton in Canada, Frankfurt, Melbourne, Taipei and Vancouver.
Pride WA say they are looking forward to working with local community groups including Team Perth to sure up Perth bid for the event. The final decision on which city will host the event will be announced in late 2025.
The next step in the selection process will see each city hoping to become the host submit the first draft of the ‘bid book’ – a document that describes how they aim to host the event.
Each of the cities will then make their pitch for event in Washington DC in October 2024, and the three finalists will be announced in December.
The Gay Games began in San Francisco
The Gay Games made their debut in San Francisco in 1982. Originally they were called the Gay Olympics.
The idea for a gay sporting competition akin to the Olympics was the brainchild of Olympian Tom Waddell. Wadell participated in the Decathlon in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, before becoming a medical doctor. He saw the need for a LGBTIQA+ focused event as people often experienced discrimination in the sporting realm.
Unlike the Olympics, there is not qualifying round, those who are willing to make the trip to the host city and take part are welcomed, and there is no requirement to disclose your sexuality.
Since its initial set up in San Franciso, which hosted the inaugural event in 1982 and the follow up in 1986, the event has been held in many cities.
Vancouver, New York, Amsterdam, Sydney, Chicago, Cologne, Cleveland-Akron and Paris have all played host.
The most recent games were originally planned to be held in Hong Kong in 2022, but they were pushed back a year due the Corona virus pandemic. Guadalajara in Mexico was added as an additional host city with events split across the two locations.
The Gay Games are a different event to the World Out Games, a splinter organisation that emerged in the early 2000s.
Their event came crashing down in 2017 when on the first day of the 10-day-long event in Miami organisers emailed participants to announce it had been cancelled. A move leaving sports people who had travelled from around the globe dumbfounded.
