In a state-backed report, consultants find the Boston 2024 bid’s costs to be underestimated and the benefits overestimated. Boston 2024 organisers say the report missed out on details and is flawed.

Will last week's events be the beginning of the end for Sepp Blatter and will Qatar be stripped of the right to host the World Cup? The findings in "The Ugly Game" provide a good basis for trying to answer these questions, says Andreas Selliaas in this review.

Book review: In his new book, economist Andrew Zimbalist analyses the benefits and risks of hosting a sports mega-event and finds that the economic risks by far exeed the benefits.

A planned anti-Qatari protest ahead of a match between Chelsea and Manchester United, the first major fan demonstration against the 2022 World Cup host, and the imminent publication of a Sunday Times book documenting Qatari political interference in world soccer body FIFA’s 2011 presidential election that returned Sepp Blatter to office at the behest of the FIFA president casts a shadow over next month’s FIFA election and is likely to renew debate about the integrity of the Qatari bid.

Multi-sport events are facing a crisis yet there are more and more of them. In his first column contribution to Play the Game, Rowland Jack considers the best way forward for multi-sport games.

Michael Garcia, the investigator behind the report into the 2018/2022 World Cup bidding process has resigned in protest over FIFA’s handling of his report.

The Qatari whistleblower Phaedra Almajid feels betrayed after her testimony on the World Cup 2018/2022 bidding process, despite promises of anonymity, was publicly dismissed as unreliable in a FIFA report. In this interview, she tells about the personal costs of standing up, and repeats her accusations of corruption in the bidding process.

The IOC has released the 20+20 recommendations for IOC president Thomas Bach’s 2020 Agenda that is supposed to bring about a reformed IOC. Main points in the proposals are sustainability and changes in the bidding process. Good governance is suggested being upheld via self-evaluation.