Big Sporting Events Find New Frontiers Eraldo Peres/Associated Press A sign welcoming visitors to Brasília, site of the opening game of the 2014 soccer World Cup. Brazil, in an unprecedented back-to-back double, will be staging the 2014 World Cup and then the 2016 Olympics, in Rio de Janeiro. When the Summer Olympics open in July with the lighting of the caldron in London, it will mark the return of one of the world's greatest sporting events to one of global sport's traditional strongholds. This will be the third time that London has staged the Games - it was also the host in 1908 and 1948 - and the British capital will hold the 2017 world athletics championships in the city's new Olympic stadium. But London is, in fact, running counter to an unmistakable trend. The world's biggest sporting events are gravitating, at least for now, away from traditional sites like London and in the direction of emerging powers and economies. "The biggest challenge I think going forward is for the maturer cities to be able to really define their narrative in the face of the quite compelling narratives that are being created elsewhere," Sebastian Coe, the chairman of the London Organizing Committee, said in an interview this week. Because the narrative at the moment that is clearly holding sway is: This is an area we've never been to before, this is our chance to really drive legacy, drive engagement within the movement and help young people into sport. A study by the Danish Institute for Sports Studies last year explored the shifting balance of bidding power and focused on five major events: Summer and Winter Olympics, the World Cup in men's soccer and both the swimming and the athletics world championships. From 1990 to 1999, these major events were staged 16 times. Fourteen of them were held in "Western countries," taken by the Danish study to mean Western Europe, Australia and North America. Two were in Japan. From 2000 to 2009, the figures were similar, with 12 of the 16 big events in Western countries, two in Japan and one - the 2008 Summer Olympics - in China. Japan and South Korea also co-hosted the 2002 soccer World Cup. But this decade will be radically different, with the West becoming a minority player in the major event business. "More and more countries and cities as they come of age are saying, "You know what? That big-event agenda? We're now ready for it,"" said Michael Payne, the former marketing director for the International Olympic Committee. There's an appreciation of what it can do for the economy, the country. Whereas in the past, it was perhaps the exclusive remit of the Western world, you've got more and more countries with the resources and the understanding that gives them the ability to go for it. "Now that's not to say you're never coming back to Europe or North America or Tokyo," he added. But I think it does mean the sports bodies, given a choice and all things being equal, will be interested in exploring a new territory. Not every major championship has yet been awarded, but it looks, above all, like the decade of countries like Brazil, Russia, China and South Korea. Brazil, in an unprecedented back-to-back double, will stage the 2014 World Cup and then the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, which will be the first Olympics staged in South America. Russia will have the 2013 world athletics championships in Moscow, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the 2015 world swimming championships in Kazan, and the 2018 soccer World Cup. China had the world swimming championships in Shanghai last year and will have the 2015 world athletics championships in Beijing. South Korea had the world athletics championships in Daegu last year and in 2018 will host its first Winter Olympics, in Pyeongchang. "I think there are two important points," said Ricardo Leyser, secretary for high-performance sports in the Brazilian Ministry of Sports. The first point is that now these emerging countries are not afraid to bid, so for the first time some countries are bidding and bidding in a serious way. The second point is that we have a connection between the development of the economy and sport. "In Brazil, for example, we probably now have 10 times more money and budget for sports than 20 years ago," he added. It's a big change. And you see sports in Brazil since probably 2002, every aspect has had a big jump. The activities are increasing in an amazing way, and I think that it's a consequence of the economic development.