Jul 15, 2005  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

A breakaway organization promoting an international gay and lesbian sports competition in Montreal in July 2006 called Out Games has registered more athletes and teams than its rival Gay Games event, which is set to take place in Chicago two weeks earlier.

But supporters of both events say it’s too soon to determine which one will draw the most participants and spectators as both sides wage an aggressive campaign to sign up paid registrants.

The two sides are pushing their campaigns through upscale Web sites accessible in several languages. Elected officials and business leaders in both cities have joined the gay organizers to help promote the two events in an unprecedented effort to lure millions of gay tourist dollars to their hometowns.

At first, many gay sports enthusiasts predicted the two competing events would lead to a financial disaster for both and would dilute and split apart what had become a unified quadrennial gay event. Now, some are wondering whether the competition has triggered an unprecedented professionalism and such an overwhelming desire to come out ahead of the other that both events might turn out better than past Gay Games — both in attendance and the financial bottom line.

As of this week, officials with Out Games announced that 5,600 participants had registered and paid in full or in part to compete in the Montreal games, including at least 1,500 Americans. Gay Games officials said about 3,000 participants who paid their registration fees in full have signed up to participate in the Chicago events. Both sides said the participants who signed up come from more than 20 countries, with most expected to come from North America.

Each side predicts at least 12,000 participants will attend their respective events.

Competing for more than athletes

The two sides are also competing to line up gay choruses and bands from Europe and North America. In recent years, the Gay Games evolved into a cultural festival as well as an athletic event, with extravaganza performances by choruses, bands and top-name entertainers taking place at stadiums where the opening and closing ceremonies are held.

“We still don’t know where most of our teams will go,” said Brent Minor, president of Team D.C., an umbrella group that represents more than two-dozen D.C. area gay and lesbian sports teams and groups, ranging from soccer and golf to swimming and volleyball.

“Team D.C. voted to support our participants, whichever event they choose to attend,” Minor said.

Minor said members of some of the D.C. teams, as well as teams in other cities, are taking a wait-and-see posture to determine which city will capture the top competition in a category of sporting event — such as soccer or swimming.

The San Francisco-based Federation of Gay Games, which was formed by the late gay Olympic athlete Tom Waddell in the 1980s, is credited with starting what has become known as an international gay and lesbian sports “movement.” Waddell almost single-handedly put together the first Gay Games competition in San Francisco in 1982 following a legal ruling initiated by the International Olympics Committee that forced him to drop the name “Gay Olympics.”

The gay international sporting competition continued every four years since that time under the Gay Games title, growing each year in numbers. The founding event in 1982 drew 1,350 gay and lesbian athletes mostly from North America and Europe, according to Roger Brigham, communications director for the Federation of Gay Games.

The number of participants jumped to 12,500 in New York City in 1994, climbed to a record 13,000 in Amsterdam in 1998 and dropped back to 11,000 in Sydney, Australia in 2002, Brigham said.

Shortly before the Sydney games were held, the FGG named Montreal the winner in a competition among gay sporting associations to sponsor the 2006 Gay Games. A short time later, the Montreal organizing committee, Montreal 2006, says it lined up generous sponsors from some of Canada’s largest corporations and persuaded the governments of Montreal, Quebec, and the national Canadian government to sign on as “partners” to the event and to kick in $1 million each to help finance the games.

The committee called those developments historic, saying Canada’s entire governmental establishment had endorsed and agreed to help subsidize an international gay sporting event.

What happened next takes on an entirely different perspective and interpretation among the Gay Games and Out Games leaders.

The Gay Games in Sydney, while hailed as a highly successful sports event, turned into a financial disaster, with millions of dollars in debt and gay and gay-friendly vendors left holding the bag with unpaid bills. ...