The citizens of Hamburg, Germany, on Sunday rejected a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics with more than half voting against it in a referendum, killing the candidacy in its infancy, they city's mayor, Olaf Scholz, said.
Close to 52 per cent voted against the €7.4 billion ($10.48 billion) project that was bidding along with Los Angeles, Rome, Paris and Budapest to host the world's biggest multi-sports event.
An aerial view shows thousands of people wearing colourful ponchos to form the Olympic rings to support Hamburg's bid for the Olympics 2024, in a park in Hamburg, Germany, Sunday Nov. 8, 2015. At left, protesters against Hamburg's Olympic bid laid the word "NO" next to the giant Olympic logo, but backers formed the letter W to turn the word into “NOW.” (Daniel Bockwoldt/The Associated Press)
Germany has to accept a second referendum defeat in two years with Munich's plans for the 2022 Winter Games thwarted by a 2013 local vote.
"The people of Hamburg took a decision and Hamburg will not be bidding to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games," Scholz told reporters. "The senate and myself would have wished a different result but it is clear.
"It is a binding decision," he said.
The rejection is also a blow to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) whose wide-ranging reforms voted in last year were aimed at making the Games more attractive to host cities.
"We have to accept the vote of the citizens," said German Olympic Sports Confederation chief Alfons Hoermann. "Olympics and Germany are not a good match at the moment."
Germans never showed widespread support for Hamburg, picked over Berlin earlier this year. Germany's football association (DFB) is mired in a bribery scandal that bid chief Nikolas Hill said was doing Hamburg's candidacy no favours.
Support had been steadily dropping with the Paris attacks earlier this month raising more security concerns.
The IOC will elect a winner in 2017.
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