Despite climbing prices, France condent of delivering aordable Olympics
The nal bill for the Paris Olympics is still unknown but, depending on the point of view, are likely to be expensive compared to original estimates or cheap, when set against other recent Games.
The total is currently approaching €9.0 billion ($9.66 billion), but is likely to pass €10 billion, forcing additional contributions from the government for an Olympics planned under the mantra “the Games nance the Games”.
With 100 days to go before the ame is lit in the opening ceremony, “the risk zone is now”, a government source said.
What is included in the cost of Olympics can lead to wildly di§erent calculations of their costs.
The Tokyo Olympics, delayed a year and held in 2021 during the COVID crisis, cost €12 billion according to Japan’s national auditors, almost twice as much as the estimate in their original bid.
For Rio in 2016, beset by corruption, the local organisers estimated a total cost of €11.8bn more than half of that on infrastructure.
For Paris, the responsibility for spending the money is divided between the Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Cojo), which is running the competition, and the Olympic Delivery Company (Solideo) which built the facilities. Both have had issues compounded by higherthan-anticipated ination.
Cojo is raising €1.24 billion from sponsors, €1.4 billion from ticket sales and it receives €1.2 billion in funding from the International Olympic Committee.
Among Cojo’s costs are renting the Stade de France, equipping the Olympic Village for the athletes, paying private security guards, for temporary stands and for the dancers at the opening ceremony.
The French government is keeping a close eye on the Cojo’s nances.
“For the moment, there is no reason to believe that there will be a decit,” Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera said.
By 2023, budget documents indicated that the public Olympic contribution had reached €2.44 billion (including € 1.3 billion from national government and €260 million from the city of Paris).
The President of the Court of Audit, Pierre Moscovici, recently upped his estimate of the nal public contribution to “three, four or ve billion euros”, saying the nal gure would only be known “after the Olympics”.
Oudea-Castera disagreed. “There’s no reason why it should be ve billion euros,” she said, adding there was no “budgetary drift or hidden costs”.
Oudea-Castera also argued that compared to the other Summer Olympics this millennium, even a nal total bill close to €10 billion would be cheap.