Homewood’s Scott Myers spearheading World Games bid

Nope, it’s not the World Cup of soccer. And it’s not the Olympic Games. 

But the World Games are a big deal. And if Homewood resident Scott Myers is successful in his efforts, the 2021 World Games will be in Birmingham.

Myers, who is executive director of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and Museum and one of the metro area’s biggest boosters for sports and city progress in general, is spearheading the effort along with others. 

Birmingham is one of just three cities still under consideration; the other two are Lima, Peru, and Ufa, Russia.

The World Games is a multidisciplinary sporting event consisting of non-Olympic sports. It’s been held every four years since 1981. It includes approximately 36 sports with more than 100 countries and 4,000 athletes participating. The event takes place over 11 days.

“To me, the opportunity to present our city and our state to 100 countries and 900 media members, who’ll be in our city writing about Birmingham, Alabama, and enjoying our Southern hospitality and seeing what a wonderful city we have is an opportunity for our city to shine on a global basis,” Myers said.

The very first World Games were held in Santa Clara, California, but they haven’t been back to the States since. The 2013 games were in Cali, Colombia; the 2017 games are in Wroclaw, Poland.

It was a trip to the Cali games that planted the seed for Birmingham’s bid. 

“I was invited to go as a guest to the World Games at Cali, Colombia. I saw the opening ceremonies and some of the various games and had a great time. I came back, and quite frankly it did not hit me at first till I started thinking about it.”

He realized that these games weren’t held in the largest cities in those countries. 

“They weren’t held in Bogota. They’re not being held in Warsaw. So they’re going to second and third tier markets. I started thinking the venues we were in, we have venues as good as or better than what they had in Cali. I thought this is something that is right-sized for us and a great opportunity for our city.”

Among the participating sports are aikido, archery, billiards, bowling, canoeing, dance sport, flying disc, gymnastics, handball, karate, kickboxing, lacrosse, orienteering, powerlifting, racquetball, rugby and sfotball. Each city can add up to five “invitational sports,” or sports of local interest. Among the possibilities that have been recommended are 3-on-3 basketball, cricket and sporting clays, among others.

World Games executives toured Birmingham and its sports venues, hotels, restaurants and college campuses in October. The representatives from each city will go to Switzerland for the final presentations on Jan. 21, 2015, and the next day the decision will be announced.

Unlike Olympics Games, no new venues would need to be built for the World Games. Some cities have built new venues, but Myers said that’s absolutely not necessary for Birmingham.

“We have all the facilities we need today to host a first-class World Games,” he said.

The estimated cost to host the games is $75 million. A Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau study projected a $256.5 million economic impact from the games. Sam Addy of the University of Alabama Center for Business and Economic Research estimated a low of $230 million and a high of $280 million impact.

Birmingham’s bid includes a couple of things unique from the other cities’ bids.

“Part of our bid we have proposed to the International World Games is that we want to have as one of our invitational sports a disabled-body athlete sport. Whether it’s wheelchair rugby or dance sport, we think it’d be a neat thing for both the able-bodied and disabled body athletes to participate in the same games and to showcase the Lakeshore Foundation, which plays such an important role in our community.

“Another one of the things that’s again unique to our bid is we are proposing what we’re calling Games Villages. Utilizing student housing at UAB, Samford and Birmingham-Southern that would be not only a place they would sleep, but eat there and train there and compete there.”