It seems as though the Olympics have become too big, too costly and too complicated to be hosted by a single city. The solution? The International Olympic Committee (IOC), the governing body for the Olympic Games, should hold competitions for each different sport in a different global city.

For an international event that, traditionally, has been so tied to celebrating the history and accomplishments of one city, this may sound far-fetched. But the world has changed in fundamental ways since the IOC organized its first set of games in the late 19th century. Today, a “decentered” games is one of the only ways to ensure local populations in democratic countries will support a bid to host the Olympics. And if the IOC is willing to leverage recent advances in technology, it could actually make the Olympics more compelling and more effective at fulfilling its mission.

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A decentered Olympics would also solve, once and for all, the problem of finding uses for the sports venues that get built for the Olympic Games, often at a huge cost, only to sit underused or abandoned once the games leave town. An Olympic softball stadium in Athens, Greece, was unusable the minute the games ended, since softball isn’t a popular sport in Greece. The same stadium in Athens, Georgia, however, would be an invaluable local resource for decades to come.

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Athletes would also have the opportunity to interact directly, via sport, with the local community. How about a series of teaching clinics for children run by Olympic field hockey players in a country where field hockey is a national sport? ... To be sure, there’s something special about having thousands of athletes from all over the world in a single place at the same time. But the pageantry of the opening and closing ceremonies could easily be preserved by flying athletes to those ceremonies from dispersed competition sites.

These ceremonies could be permanently situated in a single place that would become the spiritual center of the Olympics. Lausanne, Switzerland, where the IOC is headquartered, or Olympia, Greece, the place where the Olympics originated nearly 3,000 years ago, would be a couple of good options.