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Amsterdam interested in hosting Gay Games in 2017

Gay games is the world’s largest sporting and cultural event organized by and specifically for LGBT athletes. Amsterdam had first hosted the Gay Games in 1998 and is interested in doing so again in 2017. Gay games proved to be a major cash earner for Amsterdam as a quarter of a million people, including 12,000 participating athletes, visited the 1998 Gay Games.

Amsterdam is trying hard to lure its gay tourists as according to the Amsterdam Tourist Board, gay visitors spend an average of €160 a day — thirty percent more than heterosexual visitors. Hosting these games would not only mean more gay visitors to the city but would also prove that the city has the ability to host such a large event, thus proving the city’s candidacy for the Olympic Games in 2028.

Alderman Carolien Gehrels (sports) is talking with gay sports organizations, as well as with the organizer of the World Outgames, an alternative Gay Games taking place in Antwerp in 2013.

“Antwerp is running into all kind of organizational problems, and we want to learn from that,” Gehrels says in Dutch daily Het Parool.