Gay Games X | Limerick | London | Paris | Other bids | Documents
Bidding organization statement
While Florida and Orlando have been at the center of national and international tourism and the home of the largest events & conferences, it has never hosted a large LGBT event centered on sport or culture.
Our traditional annual Gay Days® draw 160,000+ party goers while our LGBT Pride attracts nearly 100,000 more art/culture/social issues-oriented attendees. We have also been looking at ways to get the word out that Orlando is Gay Friendly, Everyone Friendly—to draw more visitation. We are also seeking to educate the local travel industry that LGBT travel to Orlando is already a $3.0 billion business with the ability to expand quickly if we firmly establish our destination in the minds of gay and lesbian travelers. Our decision to bid on the Gay Games X easily helps us achieve these goals.
Our rationale is just not tourism. In general, Florida is a state that has not always been very welcoming to the LGBT community. The Orlando area is the opposite, an oasis of more broad-minded and inclusive people. Orlando’s progress towards equal rights and LGBT mainstreaming is exciting. Domestic partnership legislation is now on the books in the City of Orlando, Orange and Volusia Counties. Human Rights Ordinances and Domestic Partner benefits have been achieved in several surrounding Central Florida cities/counties. Large employee resource groups or diversity councils are active at major local employers including Disney, Universal, Symantec, Darden and Wells Fargo Bank. While things have been changing rather rapidly over the past few years, in keeping with the tradition and the mission of the Federation of Gay Games (…to promote equality through the organization of the premiere international LGBT and gay-friendly sports and cultural event known as the Gay Games) we believe an event of the magnitude of the Gay Games in Orlando would help solidify and advance the progress to the outlying cities and counties in Central Florida.
Finally, the large local theme parks are divisions of major media conglomerates. Both Disney Corporation (ABC, ESPN) and Universal (NBC, Bravo, Oxygen, NBC Sports) have expressed strong support at the prospect of Orlando hosting GGX. We believe that we have the opportunity in interesting these two local powerhouses in the broader popular appeal of LGBT amateur athletic competition. Our strategy is to engage them in the local organizing process to gain national and international media coverage (hopefully TV or streaming video coverage) of the events. That would reinforce both Converge’s goal of establishing Orlando as a major LGBT destination and Federation of Gay Games’ goal
of advancing the Games.
