Salt Lake City wants to host ’30 Games
Site of 2002 event hopes its venues will help its case.
Salt Lake SALT LAKE CITY —
City on Wednesday became the first U.S. city to announce its intentions to bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics as this year’s games get ready to kick off in South Korea.
The city’s Olympic exploratory committee concluded after a monthslong analysis that Utah could host the Winter Games again without losing money thanks to existing venues and the budget expertise of a team that put on the 2002 event.
The committee’s 140-page report, which includes a budget estimate of $1.35 billion, will be sent to the U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee, said Fraser Bullock, Utah panel co-chairman. Bullock will be in Pyeongchang this month and plans to meet with officials from both boards.
Utah’s bid would focus on Salt Lake City being a reliable, experienced Olympic city that could host at a lower cost than other places, which state officials believe aligns with the IOC’s “Agenda 2020” blueprint for future Olympics. It calls for fewer bil- lion-dollar projects and more venues already in place.
Salt Lake City could face competition from Denver and Reno, Nev., which are considering bids. Internationally, cities weighing the move include Sion, Swit- zerland; Calgary, Canada; Stockholm, Sweden; and Sapporo, Japan.
Salt Lake City, which prefers the 2030 Winter Games but is open to 2026, has a “reasonable” chance because of its history of hosting alpine events and the success of the 2002 Olympics, but the IOC would prefer a European city for at least one of those slots, according to Chicago-based sports-finance consultant Marc Ganis.
European voters have consistently rejected Olympic plans since Russia spent $51 billion on infrastructure for the 2014 Sochi Games. Voters in Austria last year rejected a proposed 2026 bid by twotime host Innsbruck.
Ganis said it’s worth Salt Lake City’s time to pursue the slot, considering the dwindling list of cities willing and able to host the Winter Olympics. Only two cities bid for the 2022 Winter Games.
The 2030 Winter Olympics wouldn’t normally be awarded until 2023, but Salt Lake City prepared years in advance in anticipation of a possible dual award by the IOC next year for 2026 and 2030, said Bullock, the committee co-chairman.
That’s what the IOC did for the first time last year, scrapping its traditional rules and awarding the 2024 Summer Olympics to Paris and the 2028 Summer Olympics to Los Angeles. It’s not clear yet if the U.S. Olympic Committee will pick a U.S. city for the 2026 games, a decision expected by the end of March. USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun said officials believe 2030 is more realistic for the U.S.
Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College in Massachusetts, said Salt Lake City’s $1.35 billion cost estimate seems low. He said it’s not uncommon for cities to try to garner early political support by lowball- ing estimates. The city faces several hurdles, including that LA is hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics, Zimbal- ist said. The same country hasn’t hosted back-to-back Olympics since the U.S. in the early 1980s.