Jay Kriegel, executive of New York City's bid for the 2012 Olympics explains that their goal wasn't to put New York on the map, since it already is. Rather, they wanted to use the Olympics to transform the city so 50 years in the future people would still be looking back at it and recognizing it as a positive force in the history of the city, similar to how the games turned Barcelona into a worldwide tourist location. Unlike other municipal projects, the thing about the Olympics is that it has a forceful timetable, so things actually get done. The dates of the games are set years in advance so what's been committed to has to actually be done. Knowing the timetable of the games, Kriegel hoped to be able to force major changes in the city that wouldn't happen otherwise. Since the NY committee knew they might not win the bid, they wanted to force some of their proposed changes through even before the bid was decided on. The result was the largest rezoning of NYC in history in Manhattan and the second largest rezoning in history of the Brooklyn waterfront.
To support their bid, they raised $50 million dollars from businesses and labor unions as well as individual benefactors. Their bid became the only privately funded bid in the world. This put them in an unusual position with the IOC which was used to dealing with national bids represented by national governments (for example the Madrid bid was the "king's bid "). In some ways, Kriegel reflects, it scared the IOC who viewed it as "very American ".
A big part of every bid is a comprehensive plan of how the games will run that has to be written seven years in advance. In shaping the proposal the committee was assisted by contractors, urban planners and over 40 law firms, many of whom didn't just give pro bono assistance but also made large donations. As part of their plan, the committee was able to rent, seven years in advance, 90% of all signs and advertisement space in the city. Another important part of their proposal was an agreement with the federal government on security, which included a special visa program that allowed them to acquire a visa for any Olympic athlete and their family within 24 hours. They also secured a panel of experts from around the world to advise them on running the games, a first for New York.
Ultimately though, the plan doesn't make or break a bid and almost no one on the IOC decides based on the report. Instead, the host city is chosen based on their personnel and on whether the IOC believes the city will be a good business partner for 7 years. So, to support their bid, the NY committee researched IOC voting members and had their friends come to NY to work on the project. Mayor Bloomberg traveled all over the world and Dan Doctoroff, who to had first proposed the idea of an Olympic bid, logged over a million travel miles in the last year.
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