It was during the closing ceremonies of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics that Fraser Bullock first hoped Utah would one day host the Winter Games again.
“I said, ‘Wow. This has been magical for our state,’” he recalled. “Let’s do it again!”
Bullock, who heads up the Salt Lake City Utah Committee bidding for the 2034 Winter Games, jokingly calls budgeting an unofficial Olympic sport.
“Oh, I love the budget,” he said. “I love to just go tinker late at night.”
‘Much more confident’
In 2002, organizers showed the world Utah could host the Winter Games and turn a profit. This time, Bullock said planners are much more confident in their budget ahead of the Games.
“In 2002, we hadn’t done it before,” he recalled. “We were kind of guessing.”
Ahead of the 2002 Winter Games, Utah taxpayers fronted $59 million for the construction of Olympic venues, which was paid back after the Games produced a surplus of $163.4 million.
This time, despite a $2.83 billion operating budget, Bullock said Utah taxpayers won’t have to shell out a dime for the 2034 Winter Games.
“They’re going to make money on the Games,” he said, of Utah taxpayers. “And here’s why: because the games are privately funded through ticketing, through the IOC, and through sponsors.”
Hosting again is not without risk. If Utah were to come out of the games in the red, Utah taxpayers would be on the hook, Brett Hopkins, chief operating and financial officer for the bid, told Deseret News.
But the Utah Committee for the Games is confident in the working budget and has built in contingency funds to hopefully cover any surprises.
Bullock added, “What a great return on something. You don’t even have to invest it. Talk about ROI – return on investment – that’s a pretty good one.”
What the numbers say
But don’t just take his word for it. The University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute has studied and crunched the numbers, estimating a cumulative $6.6 billion in economic impact for Utah between now and the 2034 games.
The economic projections include almost $3.9 billion in state gross domestic product, more than 42,000 job-years of employment, and $2.5 billion in personal income.
“It is an economic win for the state and something that is pretty hard to replicate in any other way,” said Natalie Gochnour, director of the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
Gochnour and Bullock say Utah is well situated to pull it off again, in part, because we don’t need to build any new venues. Money left over from the 2002 Olympics helped maintain Utah’s Olympic facilities for years. When that ran out, the legislature stepped in, allocating close to $95 million in state funding so far to keep the venues in use.
The goal, this time around, is to leave behind a larger fund, “to make sure that going forward, no taxpayer money is required to keep the venues up to date operating and great for our communities and for our kids,” Bullock said.
Other economic impacts
Hosting the Games can also bring other economic wins. For example, ahead of the 2002 games, federal funds were fast tracked to Utah to build the Trax light rail system and complete several highway improvement projects.
“When you’re going to be host to the world, you get better in every way,” said Gochnour. “You know, our restaurants have to get better. Our hotels have to get better. Our population has to take care of the things that are important to us.”
Just as athletes train and prepare now, hopeful to one day compete on a world stage, Gochnour said Utah must put in the work between now and 2034 for a successful Olympics.
“We’ve delivered on that vision of becoming a winter sports capital,” she said. “That’s our living legacy and that’s a plus to us going into 2034. We didn’t have that before 2002. It’s living today.”