Roger Brigham on the need for a single quadrennial LGBT sport and culture event

In Outsports, Roger Brigham gives insights into the project for a joint Gay Games/Outgames event:


When the FGG and GLISA recently announced that they had ended two years of talk on running a combined global sports and cultural festival in 2018, the wheels were set in motion for plans for Gay Games X to go forward, and critics predictably began to criticize both organizations and their failure to reach agreement.

Most of the criticism has been based on feelings, rather than fact; and some of it has bordered on counter-productive spite. I’d like to present my thoughts on this topic and my hopes for the future. I have been connected to the subject since it was first raised through my various roles since 2003 with the FGG, Team San Francisco, Wrestlers WithOut Borders and Golden Gate Wrestling Club. Before joining the FGG board late last season, I reported on the talks, events and organizations extensively. The thoughts I offer here are my own, not necessarily representative of the organizations with which I am involved.

Why is [a single quadrennial LGBT sport and culture event] not only desirable, but inevitable and even necessary?

Some things are too big to fail, but others are too big to fly. The bigger an event is, the more components and disciplines and participants it requires, and the greater and greater demands it places on its host for adequate mass transit, adequate accommodations, adequate facilities, and sufficient volunteers and other workers. The history of the Olympic Games (which take about 2.5 weeks to complete) and the Gay Games suggest a multi-sport festival maxes out at about 12,000 athletes and 30 to 40 disciplines. And the bigger it gets, the fewer cities capable of hosting it.

That is the range at which the original 1QE, maxed out in the years 1994 to 2006: the range sustainable by LGBT sports organizations and hosts alike.

The mainstream Olympic Games for elite athletes, through massive government underwriting, corporate sponsorship and television revenues, are just able to sustain that once every two years (Winter Olympics every two years; Summer Olympics in the other even numbered years). LGBT sports, drawing on a far smaller participatory population base and with a fraction of the government and sponsorship backing, are barely able to sustain that only once every four years — and even then only through the massive “sweat equity” put into it by the volunteer athletes and organizations who step up to help the hosts.

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