Candidates Wildcard

Well if there's one thing we know about Ilyumzhinov's promises, they don't always come to fruition.

If America had got it, they almost certainly would have nominated Wesley So, and that would have been three Americans in the Candidates (alongside Nakamura and Caruana). Back in the 60's and 70's, there was a rule that meant one country could only have a certain number of players in the Candidates (and I think one of the Soviet players missed out on a spot because of this).

Yes, Russia could also have nominated a third Russian, but with an Armenian sponsor, the chances of that were small (because of the passion for chess in Armenia and Aronian's status there).

Or maybe America didn't have any interest anymore in hosting the Candidates? We don't know what happened behind closed doors, maybe Moscow was the only city to put a bid in?

The 2014 contest had 3 Russians automatically qualified plus they got a wildcard on top of that.