Nope, no city was compelled. That was intended to be a rhetorical point, because it's so obviously not the case. Did anyone feel pressure to because of constitu

Nope, no city was compelled. That was intended to be a rhetorical point, because it's so obviously not the case. Did anyone feel pressure to because of constituencies? Maybe. But compelled? Absolutely not. You have a point that the Olympics analogy isn't great. One other flaw is that cities aren't contractually bound to deliver the promised incentives, either. Olympic athletes can't change their performance after the fact. I find myself in an uncomfortable situation, where I'm defending Amazon (who I have no relationship with aside from being a customer) and not even liking the HQ2 selection process, even a little. But it's just hardball negotiation that was conducted a bit more publicly than countless other site selection processes for countless other companies.