Ready for a Winter Olympics Reprise?
– By Howard Sierer –
Salt Lake City’s bid to host a second Winter Olympic Games after its smashing success in 2002 is bumping into economic and political reality factors beyond its control. I’m hoping the city overcomes them.
My taste in sports television is transformed every two years when the Summer and Winter Olympic Games feature sports I don’t watch or even follow otherwise.
I have a strong preference for those Olympic sports that are scored objectively, where winners have the fastest times or score the most points. I can watch hours of Alpine and cross-country skiing, bobsled and luge runs, speed skating, and – believe it or not – even curling. My all-time favorite: men’s and women’s Alpine downhill races with their 70-80 mile per hour speeds.
I’m not much interested in sports where subjective judging determines winners: figure skating, half-pipe snowboarding, aerials, and the like.
I’ll binge-watch the 2026 Winter Olympic Games planned for Milano-Cortina, Italy. In the meantime, I’ll be cheering for Salt Lake City’s bid for the 2030 or 2034, or 2038 Games. Why the uncertainty about which year? Read on.
Salt Lake City staged the 2002 Games in spite of what the International Olympic Committee called “a set of unique and challenging circumstances, including terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, an economic recession, and a crisis related to the Olympic host election process, which led to a major reform of the process.”
The IOC’s “major reform” was instituted following a scandal in which the Salt Lake Organizing Committee was accused of lavishing gifts on members of the IOC. Several IOC committee members resigned, as did the SLOC’s leaders. Mitt Romney took the SLOC helm and put together a team that turned the scandal into success.
Salt Lake’s 2002 Olympic Winter Games received lavish praise from the International Olympic Committee. The committee said the Games “were delivered successfully and served as a springboard for growing winter sport and bringing more major sporting events to the state of Utah.”
The committee noted that the Games allowed Utah to establish itself as one of the world’s premier high-performance and recreational winter sports destinations. Since hosting the 2002 Games, our state has staged more than 175 international winter sports events, including more than 60 World Cup events, as well as seven world championships.
The State of Utah estimated that the 2002 Games resulted in a $5 billion boost for the state. State and local government tax revenue was $76 million above expenses for the 1996-2003 time period and generated 45,700 job-years of employment with $3 billion in personal income.
Hosting subsequent sporting events brought an additional $2 billion into our economy, with an overall 72% increase in skier visits between 2002 and 2019.
The Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation continues to maintain three Olympic venues open to the public: the Utah Olympic Oval ice skating rink (Kearns), the Utah Olympic Park (Park City), and the Soldier Hollow Nordic Centre (Midway).
Utahns bought 40% of the tickets in 2002, and most events were sold-out. A recent Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll shows that the Olympic spirit still burns brightly for many in Utah: 79% of Utahns approve of the Games returning to the state, while only 16% disapprove and 5% were uncertain.
Will the new Games be worth the cost? Making the bid will cost about $2 million in private funds. If Utah wins the Games, staging them will cost about $2.5 billion. Just as in 2002, those costs will be easily repaid from sponsorships, ticket sales, and broadcast rights. No state and local funding will be needed; in fact, just as in 2002, state and local governments will come out ahead.
But at the international level, economics and politics come into play. Sapporo, Japan, was a contender for the 2030 Games until its own version of a scandal pushed its bid back to the 2034 Games. Vancouver, Canada, and Barcelona, Spain, are also possible bidders.
Economics are a factor as well since Los Angeles has been selected to host the 2028 Summer Games. The 2030 Winter Games will take place 19 months later, and if both take place in the same country, sponsors and television viewers might well suffer Olympic fatigue, straining both interest and the hoped-for economic payoff.
I’ll cheer for the Salt Lake Winter Games; whether they occur in 2030, 2034, or 2038, the sooner, the better from this fan’s perspective.
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