Organizers of the 2022 Gay Games in Hong Kong have dropped the International Gay and Lesbian Football Association championships from the Gay Games soccer program, leaving local players in a quandary of where to plan to compete next year.
Gus Penaranda, IGLFA president, said HK2022 notified the international LGBTQ+ soccer organization of the cancellation in an email May 12. IGLFA now expects to receive bids from Sydney and Washington, D.C. and choose a new host city by July. Washington had been the runner-up in previous bidding for IGLFA’s 2022 championship. Sydney will be host next year for World Pride.
“We knew Hong Kong would be difficult,” Penaranda told the Bay Area Reporter. “But it was quite a shocker. We’ve had emails and text messages and calls going back to 2019. The notice gave us such little time to plan.”
In the email to Penaranda, HK2022 strategic adviser Nigel Lee wrote, “Having enough quality football pitches has been one of our challenges. GGHK2022 has come to the realization that we no longer feel that we have sufficient capacity to accommodate all the teams we want to attract from the Asia region and to host an exclusive IGLFA competition concurrently. Our organizing team have considered various options and concluded that we will not be able to host the IGLFA World Championship.”
In a follow-up email confirming the cancellation of the championships, Lee wrote the Gay Games soccer competition would be “on a first-come, first-serve basis and we are hoping to be fully inclusive in welcoming under-represented groups, namely women, youth, and trans participants, through our outreach efforts across our region, and globally.”
The decision to drop the IGLFA was publicized Monday night on Facebook by Hong Kong organizers, who could not be reached for comment by the B.A.R. At the FGG virtual membership meeting in January, Willem Hoekstra, operations director for HK2022, said organizers were identifying “trigger points” to decide whether to continue, initiate, delay, revise, or cancel events. (See January 25, 2021 Jock Talk, https://gghk2022.com/en/, costs 50 Hong Kong dollars (about $6.44 USD) and will provide a discount of 200 Hong Kong dollars (about $25.78) when registration opens. The pre-registration fee is non-refundable.
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