With less than a year to go until the vote by the 111 members of the International Olympic Committee at its Session in Copenhagen on October 2, 2009, the campaign is beginning to pick-up pace dramatically.

 

Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo were all be presenting their visions for 2016 to the 42 countries eligible to attend his three-day event in the famous Mexican holiday resort.

 

It will be the first in a series of presentations to each of the five continental Olympic associations.

 

The cities also plan to have strong lobbying teams trying to help sell their message, especially as a number of European, African and Oceania IOC members are also attending the conference.

 

Chicago are still the narrow favourites ahead of the three other cities but have some repairing to do after the fall-out from the claims by a senior official at McDonald's last month that their multi-million dollar sponsorship hinges on whether the Summer Games return to the United States in 2016 for the first time in 20 years.

 

There was also anger among their rivals after erroneous claims that Sebastian Coe, the London 2012, was working for them as an adviser.

 

The event will mark the international debut of new United States Olympic Committee's (USOC) chairman-in-waiting Larry Probst.

 

High on the agenda for many of the National Olympic Committees will be the distribution of television and marketing revenues, a topic that has long divided the Olympic Movement and which the successful resolution of could ultimately help determine whether Chicago are awarded the 2016 Games or not.

 

Influential Olympic insiders elsewhere want the US to receive a smaller share of marketing and television revenues, but the USOC claims it is already settling for amounts far below what it could generate if freed to pursue marketing efforts on its own.

 

The USOC has traditionally enjoyed a notably large share of Olympic television and marketing revenues.

 

This includes 20 per cent share of global marketing revenues generated by the Olympic and 12.75 per cent of the $5.7 billion (£3.2 billion) NBC paid for the broadcast rights to the Games up to London 2012, a source of resentment among many other countries.

 

There is no doubt that the subject has helped fuel anti-American tensions within the IOC and helped contribute to New York's disappointing fourth-place in the race to host the 2012 Olympics.

 

Finding a compromise that keeps everybody happy could be the key to deciding the host city of the 2016 Olympics.