Could Liverpool and Manchester bid for Olympics?

Andy Burnham said Manchester's facilities are "second-to-none"

A Liverpool-Manchester bid for the 2040 Olympics and Paralympics could help "rebalance" a North-South divide through investment, leaders in the region have said.

The idea was first proposed by the Heseltine Institute, a public policy research centre in Liverpool.

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said it was a "good idea" for the two North West cities to bid for the games instead of London, where Mayor Sadiq Khan has said he was keen to see them return after the success of 2012.

"I hear London is asking for another go. But definitely not, the country couldn't give London a second Olympics," said Burnham.

Journalist and former Liverpool mayoral candidate Liam Fogarty was commissioned by the Heseltine Institute to set out a vision for how a Liverpool-Manchester bid would look.

He said: "We've had a ten-year conversation about the North-South divide and levelling up, but we haven't made much progress."

Mr Fogarty said sport was a way of addressing the split through investment in infrastructure and "bringing a bit of happiness along the way".

The introduction of metro mayors meant the cities were already working more closely together on issues like better rail links, he added

He has urged authorities in the two cities to commission a feasibility study into hosting the games "and see what's possible".

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been contacted for comment.

'I'm in'

Burnham said: "You look at our facilities and they're second-to-none across the North West.

"If the government really wants to rebalance the country, this could be the way to do it. I'm in."

Liverpool's council leader Liam Robinson said the idea was "exciting" and if it happened he would want Liverpool to be at "the very forefront" of it.

He said "Liverpool's at its best on the global stage", pointing to the recent experience of hosting Eurovision and the Capital of Culture as examples.

Abdi Jama said the rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool is overblown

Four-time Paralympic wheelchair basketball medallist Abdi Jama, who grew up in Liverpool and currently plays for Manchester Revolution, said a bid shared by both cities for the 2040 games would "be a dream come true".

He said the rivalry between them was "overblown", and did not go deeper than football.

"I go from one city where I live to the other where I train, it's not that far," he said.

Mr Jama said "having the Olympics and Paralympics in the North would make the cities more attractive and help them grow", adding that both already had "fantastic" facilities.

The 2002 Commonwealth Games brought an estimated £22m of investment into Manchester and had been a "big part of Greater Manchester's regeneration story", Burnham said.

An economic boost of about £14bn went into London for the 2012 Olympics, with huge infrastructure projects that completely transformed areas like Stratford into sporting destinations.

For Liverpool and Manchester, both leaders say investment would be needed in transport before each was ready to handle the mass of international sports fans headed to an Olympics there.

Hosts for the Olympics are usually decided between seven and 14 years before they take place, to give cities time to prepare.

The competition to host in 2040 is already heating up, with Germany and Italy already believed to be preparing bids.