Firstly, those so called "Western" hubs of experienced hosts in which justifying an attempt to land an event has become ever-harder in our era of economic stagnation, referendums and increasingly mainstream opposition movements. 

I have lost count of the number of times we have written about the failure of such an attempt in recent years and the broadest aim of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) whole Agenda 2020 reform process was to reinvigorate interest in these parts of the world. Strong Los Angeles and Paris attempts for 2024 should be the proof of this new approach but the latest race has also already seen failed efforts from Boston, Hamburg and Rome. The jury remains out about whether Agenda 2020 will have a serious impact in re-galvanising interest.

Secondly, places from the so called "developing world" that are building up their infrastructure and expertise to the level necessary to land the Olympic crown jewel. 

Brazil, while hailed as one of the world’s most prosperous rising powers a generation ago, still falls in this category, and Rio 2016 showed us how difficult it is to host an Olympic and Paralympic Games amid so many crippling political, economic and wider corruption, crime and poverty problems. 

Jakarta and Lima are also facing challenges as they prepare for the respective 2018 Asian and 2019 Pan American Games, while Durban appears poised to lose the 2022 Commonwealth Games after failing to provide sufficient Government backing. In the present climate, it appears impossible for an Olympic Games to take place in Africa in the short, medium or even long-term.

Thirdly, those so called "authoritarian" regimes with the natural resources and logistical expertise to pull-off a major event but, perhaps more attractively to some organisations, a political system without the space for the sort of opposition movements seen elsewhere. It is these places which, over the last decade or so, have increasingly dominated the major event framework. For them, sport is a key soft power tool to raise their profile while, for sporting bodies, they are a limitless pool of resources which bring less pressure than difficult Western democracies. It has thus been a win-win partnership culminating in Russia and Qatar being awarded the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup tournaments respectively.

But, amidst the festive season fun of writing about Russian suspensions, denials, admissions and - alas - denials of admissions, I was struck by a press release which popped into our inbox last Tuesday (December 27) from the International Cycling Union (UCI). 

"The UCI has today received notice of the cancellation of both the Tour of Qatar and Ladies Tour of Qatar," said a strikingly terse 31-word statement. "It is understood the decision follows difficulty attracting sponsor financial support."

Such a lack of detail in a world where such press releases are invariably convoluted and padded out with spin invariably sets alarm bells ringing and something did not seem quite right here. 

"Borrowed time: Why lack of local support was the Tour of Qatar’s real undoing" was the headline of a Cycling Weekly comment piece published soon after. It outlined how a lack of crowd support and local interest had led to an inevitable decline in a 14-year-old event which boasted such illustrious winners as Belgium's Tom Boonen and Britain's Mark Cavendish. A similarly poor turnout was evident at the Road World Championships in the Qatari capital last October where, for the first time ever, spectators at the junior road races reportedly outnumbered those for the elite, "thanks to the presence of lots of proud parents". Qatar still have virtually no cyclists of their own so the event has certainly not achieved its stated aim of acting as a catalyst for the development of the sport in the country.

But, I thought to myself when reading this, has big crowds and inspired locals ever really been the aim of such an event? Has it not more been about the soft power benefits explained above. And, hold on, "difficulty attracting financial support?" This is Qatar we are talking about, right, where finance has never usually been a problem?

Yes, there has been a steady fall in oil prices in recent times, but the highly diversified condition of the Qatari economy has meant this has had far less of an impact than in some neighbouring Gulf states. 

"Qatar is forecast to reach an annual growth rate of 3.4 per cent in 2017, which is the highest forecast growth in the Gulf Cooperation Council," Finance Minister Ali Sherif Al-Emadi was quoted by the Gulf Times as telling the Euromoney conference last week. 

He added that they plan to invest QAT 46 billion (£10.2 billion/$12.6 billion/€12 billion) in 2017 alone in "key strategic mega-projects", a bigger sum than the budgets for Los Angeles and Paris 2024 put together.

So the problem is certainly not financial and may relate more to an apathy about hosting more cycling events. Al-Emadi did not specify exactly what he means by "strategic mega-projects" and - beyond one perfunctory mention of Qatar 2022 - he did not specify that he meant sporting events. Or, possibly, may it relate to a wider strategic rethink about the fundamental benefits of hosting sporting events prevalent ever since Doha hosted the Asian Games in 2006?

And, if this is the case, could these concerns be shared by other countries, like Russia and Azerbaijan?

I do not know the answer to this question, but it certainly bears thinking about at a time in which the Olympic Movement seems to take interest from these parts for granted.

Is it possible that the negative aspects of hosting sport are now outweighing the positives? Russia's "Decade of Sport" was such a vital part of Vladimir Putin's triumphant return to the Presidency in 2012 and began successfully with the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Sochi before allegations of state-sponsored doping cast a shadow over the events.

For the time being, Putin is standing-firm and denying all wrongdoing. Yet, as the IOC and International Federations belatedly begin to take action over the allegations, will there come a point where he snaps and abandons interest in hosting events? This has already happened with the 2019 European Games, where it appears the decision to instead award the event to Minsk in Belarus was as much due to Russian apathy about hosting it than the European Olympic Committees not wanting them to.

Qatar has faced similar criticism in recent months after the World Anti-Doping Agency inauspiciously chose the eve of Doha hosting the Association of National Olympic Committees General Assembly to announce the suspension of the national drugs testing laboratory. They have faced far stronger criticism over human rights abuses as they prepare to host the World Cup, and will doubtless continue to do so. 

Azerbaijan also faced criticism before and during the 2015 European Games in Baku relating to all manner of human rights concerns. The event was meant to show off a new European power but, partly because they exacerbated criticism by denying visas to journalists, almost all of the non-sporting attention focused on the Aliyev ruling dynasty. 

"It is a world of diminishing returns," one Olympic Movement expert told me when I raised the issue with him. "And it is often no longer worth these countries sticking their heads above the parapet."

A similar trend is already evident with Minsk 2019, where human rights groups are already using the European Games as a bargaining chip to draw attention to alleged abuses there. Just to be clear, I am by no means criticising this, and such groups are right to take any opportunity to further their cause. But, at the same time, it does not come as a complete surprise if the regimes concerned begin to fail see the attraction of hosting major events. 

One fascinating case study for 2017 could be Turkmenistan with capital Ashgabat hosting the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in September. Turkmenistan, by any standards, is an utterly bizarre place. But, while it is tempting to focus more on its eccentricities, Human Rights Watch highlight it as one of the world's "most repressive countries" which is "virtually closed to independent scrutiny".

This could be about to change with the arrival of a major sporting competition. The participation of the "Western" nations of Australia and New Zealand and other Oceanic countries alongside Olympic Council of Asia representatives could only heighten the media gaze... 

All in all, it certainly could become a tricky situation for the IOC and International Federations who, on the one hand, are desperate to be seen as tough on issues such as doping and human rights but are, at the same time, keen not to lose clients that are currently their most reliable and wealthy. 

Trouble is, so keen are the IOC to tie in both France and the United States to the Olympic Movement, that the rumour-mill is ablaze with suggestions that one of Paris or Los Angeles will host the 2024 Games this year while the other will be promised - or even awarded - the 2028 edition. With Baku, Doha and somewhere in Russia, possibly Saint Petersburg, three of the other possible contenders for those latter Games, this speculation will hardly be encouraging their enthusiasm.

The IOC may have been trying to put a positive spin on a difficult year in its President Thomas Bach's New Year Message last week, but in reality they begin 2017 with a multitude of challenges on almost every front. While not the most obvious, this possible apathy among their most loyal bidding clients adds yet another layer of complexity.