Hamburg drops 2024 Games bid after referendum defeat

"We expected a different result," bid CEO Nikolas Hill said. "The result nevertheless is clear for us, we have to accept it. There will be no discussion or rethinking it. That is it. That is what they wanted."

Close to 52 percent of the 650,000 votes cast went against the 7.4 billion euro (£5.21 billion) project that was bidding along with Los Angeles, Rome, Paris, and Budapest to host the world's biggest multi-sports event.

Hill said a string of unrelated events, including the Paris attacks earlier this month and global sports scandals in soccer and athletics, affected voters.

"The attacks in Paris, the (German World Cup 2006) affair, the refugee situation, the doping scandals. They did not have anything to do with this but it has been irritating and disturbing people," Hill told a conference call.

Germany must accept a second referendum defeat in two years after Munich's plans for the 2022 winter Games were thwarted by a 2013 local vote. Hill said the latest result was "not going to make it easier in the future (for Germany) to get into the Olympics."

The rejection is also a blow to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) whose wide-ranging reforms voted in last year were aimed at making the Games more attractive to host cities.

Hamburg's concept involved the Games being held in the Kleiner Grasbrook area, technically an island but only a 10-minute walk from the city centre, that would have become the Olympic park and offered athletes and spectators short distances to travel to the competition venues.

"The people of Hamburg took a decision and Hamburg will not be bidding to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games," Mayor Olaf Scholz told reporters. "The senate and myself would have wished a different result but it is clear. It is a binding decision," he said.

Germans never showed widespread support for Hamburg, picked over Berlin earlier this year, and even a narrow victory in the referendum would not have won it any bonus points with the IOC, eager to see strong local support in potential or host cities of the Olympics.

"We have to accept the vote of the citizens," said German Olympic Sports Confederation chief Alfons Hoermann. "Olympics and Germany are not a good match at the moment."

The IOC will elect the hosts for the 2024 Games in 2017.