Salt Lake City, Sapporo Presents Bids to Host 2030 Winter Olympics to IOC

Presentations made, the 2030 Olympic Winter Games bid groups from Salt Lake City, Utah, and Sapporo are now in wait-and-see mode.

Both groups presented to the International Olympic Committee’s Future Host Commission on Tuesday morning. The virtual presentations are expected to be the final ones made the Future Host Commission before it decides which bid would be invited into a targeted dialogue with the IOC with an eye toward being awarded the 2030 Games.

That announcement was expected to be in early December — but the IOC’s moving of its next General Session from spring 2023 to the fall 2023 means a decision by the Future Host Commission may not come until early 2023, said Fraser Bullock, president and chief executive officer of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games.

“The presentation today to the Future Host Commission was another positive step in our continuous dialogue with the International Olympic Committee and International Paralympic Committee about bringing the Winter Games back to America,” Bullock said. “These interactions with the Commission have been a valuable two-way feedback tool. While this process is focused on 2030, we made it clear we are available to host in either 2030 or 2034, whenever it best meets the needs of both the Olympic and Paralympic Movements, as well as our Utah host communities.”

Salt Lake’s presentation included multiple people from the bid group including Bullock and SLC-UT Chair Catherine Raney Norman plus Olympian Lindsey Vonn, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and Utah Governor Spencer Cox. USOPC Board Chair Susanne Lyons and Chief Executive Officer Sarah Hirshland also spoke for the Salt Lake bid.

Salt Lake City and Sapporo are the two remaining candidates for 2030 after Vancouver’s bid was all but officially ended when the provincial government of British Columbia said it would not financially support its efforts. The Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees this week sent an open letter to the government of British Columbia urging them to reconsider the decision; the bid was officially led by the Four Nations tribes in Canada, making it the first bid of its kind for an Olympics.

Sapporo remains the favorite for 2030 among many Olympic observers but is dealing with allegations of bribery against members of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee and its partners that have drawn such negative publicity Sapporo Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto’s visit to the IOC earlier this fall suddenly was cancelled. Sapporo’s latest budget projection for the 2030 Games was $2.17 billion; Salt Lake City’s proposed 2030 budget with inflation projected into the cost is $2.2 billion.

Olympic budgets have been in the news throughout Europe as well. The operating budget for the 2024 Paris Olympics is expected to go up to $4.5 billion, a 10% increase in part because of high inflation, organizers said Tuesday. Organizers said half the extra money is needed for inflation, while some will go toward additional expenses for the opening ceremony on the Seine River and costs such as human resources and cybersecurity.

The overall budget for the Paris Olympics is about $8.2 billion. Organizers also said they expect to generate more income from tickets sales than expected and they are ahead of schedule in securing revenues from partnership deals.

The Olympics that immediately follow Paris, the 2026 Winter Games in Milan-Cortina, recently approved a $50 million project to put a roof over the outdoor speedkating oval. The Milan-Cortina organizing committee it couldn’t comment on a decision by the local city council in the Trentino region but noted the International Skating Union prefers an indoor oval.

The move comes after authorities in the Veneto region set aside more than $80 million to renovate the historic sliding track in Cortina for bobsled, luge and skeleton races. Neither costs will be included in official Milan-Cortina budgets; the moves come amid reports that the new Italian government is set to appoint Andrea Varnier, who helped organize the 2006 Turin Games, as the chief executive for the 2026 organizing committee.