How many visitors does the WUG’s typical bring in?
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This was from the article I linked above, I’m sure these are just rough guestimates:
The Games typically include over 150 countries and an official delegation of athletes, coaches, and support staff totaling more than 10,000. With 19 sports being conducted at as many as 60 different venues, the Games can encompass more than 250 individual sports competitions. Up to 1,500 members of the national and international media attend, and the Games are broadcast worldwide to an audience of over 400 million. Independent third-party studies have shown the significant local economic impacts of the event to range from $150 million to over $370 million. North Carolina has proposed the dates of Tuesday, July 13 through Sunday, July 25, 2027, as the preferred dates for hosting the Games.
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We obviously already have the NCAA, but the Universiade (as it’s called outside of English) is a huge deal for other countries with less hyped-up inter-university competition and is a big preliminary step to making your country’s Olympic teams. It gets a LOT of media attention abroad.
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I’m with ya, Raleigh pulling off a successful mini-Olympic international event like this would be a huge deal. Not just for here in Raleigh but North Carolina too. Apart from the economic benefits highlighted above, I’m sure international eyes could bring future international investment opportunities too.
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Exactly. Perfect opportunity to get that tunnel under Six Forks built.
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Is there enough lodging in this area to support that many people?
Got 5 years to build what we don’t have already
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Like Jesse says, we do have some time to plan ahead but we shall see. Usually before these big sporting events like the Olympics or FIFA World Cup you see a lot of government spending (for better or worse) on preparation items like transit, hotels, stadiums, etc. Hopefully the legislature can come together and spend prudently on gaps of what we don’t have.
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Yep, could be a good impetus for some things the region needs regardless.
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Oh hey, the Triangle’s bid website doesn’t look like trash anymore!
Looks like you can also support them financially as an individual or become a corporate sponsor, too.
You can also apply to this system to become a volunteer for the University Games. It sounds like the idea is you’re supposed to volunteer at other sports championship events around the Triangle, and you rack up brownie points to get higher priority to be chosen as a volunteer for the Games.
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Also, don’t know if this is taken to account at all. Looks like South Korea has hosted this thing twice since the US has hosted it. Maybe that might help play here, but who knows maybe money talks at the end of the day.
Should the North Carolina bid be successful in October, it would only be the second time the United States, and only the third time North America, will have hosted the summer edition of the FISU World University Games after Buffalo in 1993, and Edmonton, Canada in 1983.
The proposed host is named the Triangle Region and is made up of the Raleigh-Durham-Cary-Chapel Hill areas of the state of North Carolina.For Korea, the country is seeking to host the FISU World University Games Summer for the third time following Daegu in 2003 and Gwangju in 2015.
The combination of the cities and provinces of Daejeon, Sejong, Chungbuk, and Chungnam make up Chungcheong Megacity. At the geographic centre of Korea, this region is home to 5.8 million people.
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I noticed that as well and have hopes that’s taken into account. I think what hurts us is probably facilities and hotel rooms. Not that I’ve done research to compare, but just based on the size of our area vs theirs. I hope I’m wrong and I don’t think the US would have selected us as their bid if we were deficient.
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Their city is called Chungcheong Megacity, so, yeah, we’re doomed.
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But we’ve got the mysterious yet ever popular Raleigh-Durham Megacity… I still think we have a shot 
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The “megacity” title is just a marketing ploy since neither of our metro areas meet the actual definition for megacities.
Okay, so what IS Chungcheong? (click me!)
Chungcheong is actually the name of a historic province way back when the Korean peninsula was ruled as one, unified kingdom. The venues for the Korean bid are actually spread out over two provinces and two autonomous cities, some of which are poorly connected to each other.
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Sejong is a new planned city that’s intended to be the new administrative capital of South Korea. Among other fundamental flaws, it’s also still being built and is surrounded by mountains on all sides.
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Daejeon is a more established city 17mi to the south. It has a subway line that connects several key venues including the World Cup Stadium and one of several swimming venues, high-speed rail service to Seoul, and express buses to Incheon Airport.
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Cheongju is 16 miles to the east of Sejong, and is a provincial capital that’s a home to a few universities. They’ll tell you they have a direct train line to “Sejong”, except you still need to cross a mountain by BRT before you actually get there.
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Finally, Cheonan is 22 miles north of Sejong. They’re a major city with lots of colleges and tourist spots that exploded in population in the mid-late 20th century. They’re also served by high-speed rail and a subway/suburban rail line that goes straight to Seoul.
The Korean bid committee’s trying to collect 1 million signatures from people supporting the bid. This sounds very ambitious -until you realize the region’s four volunteer service centers have over 1.5 million members combined. So local and national support could be an advantage for them.
Still, it seems like the Koreans think we’d be tough to beat since we’d get to act as a pregame for the LA Olympics in 2028. We may also not be at a big disadvantage for hotels, since Daejeon, one of the two autonomous cities, is said to have about 1,800 hotel rooms. Assuming similar rates for other big cities in the area, it sounds like Chungcheong may need to work on building more visitor and athlete lodging as well. We may be at an advantage when it comes to transportation as well for the same reason.
EDIT: The TBJ has an article about this now, too! Turns out, the Olympic Festival that the Triangle hosted in 1987 had over 464k visitors -and our bid’s lead organizer thinks the World University Games could bring about 600,000 visitors to the Triangle!
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No better location in America for “college athletics”
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Yeah, I’m pretty famously one to tamp down the hype on these sorts of things, but even I think this would be a very cool thing for the region if it happened. The crucial thing is that all of the competition venues already exist, so there’s nothing to build, so it’s fairly inexpensive to host. The tourism revenue will be nice while the event lasts, and it’d be a great way to raise Raleigh’s profile internationally. Plus, if it came here, I would enjoy going to these events and watching them. (I hate that wrestling wasn’t chosen as one of the optional sports, but I get it, obviously.)
It’s not going to drastically change the trajectory of the region or anything, but it would absolutely be a really good thing if we get chosen to host this.
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Mr. Donovan & I agree finally. 
This would be a great ‘branding’ opportunity for the region…sort of ‘coming out party’ beyond the US borders. We have the event venues in Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham; even Buies Creek and ALL are 'university venues"… & the soccer stadium is coming (I promise). Hotels can easily be added (already are) before '27.
Hopefully the support from the US boosters is powerful enough…Hell, we should be able to argue “…we don’t have a crazy ass dictator next door who might randomly decide to shoot a missile at us!!!..”
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I want to say I heard they would house athletes in the dorms at local universities.
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I was going to say same. May was a previous WUG, but was some event a few years back, where they used collage dorms to house a lot of people connected to the games. That would indicate only have to find hotel and other rentals to spectators or others that would not stay in the dorms. Not sure but guess would be timed for when no students so would also open up the massive number to student apartments as well. .
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