Olympic chiefs move to ease concerns over cost of staging games Computer-generated image of Tokyo's Olympic Stadium A shortage of cities willing to host the Olympics has forced games chiefs to address public concerns about costs and relax the tight strictures bidders must go through to compete. Olympics chiefs became alarmed when the race to host the 2020 summer games, won by Tokyo, generated a shortlist of only three cities. Fears the Olympics was losing its allure grew when a number of cities pulled their plans to bid for the 2022 winter games, some following public votes which concluded staging the Olympics was not worth the expense. Thomas Bach, International Olympic Committee president, on Tuesday unveiled a series of recommendations to freshen up the Olympics, one of which will see the IOC change the philosophy of the stuffy bidding process. Candidate cities will now be "invited" to bid and the IOC will help them prepare their bids by walking them through what is required. Oslo's decision to withdraw from the 2022 race, which left Beijing and Almaty as the only remaining bidders, provoked an unseemly row between Norway and the IOC, the games" organisers. On top of cost concerns, Norwegian politicians complained about the extravagance and pomposity of the IOC's bidding demands, which ran to 7,000 pages. This prompted the IOC to accuse Oslo of making its decision based on "half-truths and factual inaccuracies." The global downturn focused public attention on the cost of hosting big sporting events. Protesters in Brazil claimed their government was diverting resources that should have been spent on schools and hospitals to pay for stadiums for the 2014 Fifa World Cup. Addressing the cost issue, the IOC will now encourage candidate cities to prepare bids using existing facilities and temporary and demountable venues. It will also relax rules that prevent any Olympic event being located outside the host city, which raises the prospect of cross-border joint bids. It will also publish the host city contract and help cities fund the cost of bidding. Mr Bach believes the Olympic movement has been losing the argument over games costs. Much of the $50bn attributed to the cost of Sochi's 2014 winter games went on Russia's long-term capital projects, the IOC argues. In a nod to Fifa's problems over the 2018/2022 World Cup bidding process, the IOC is tightening its governance. It will require bid consultants and lobbyists to sign up to its ethics code. Mr Bach was elected president last year promising to modernise the Olympic movement. Among his 40 recommendations is a year-round Olympic channel to promote the movement between games, and making it easier to change sports in the Olympic programme. The IOC will vote on the recommendations next month.