The 2030 Games will be awarded in 2023.
Utah Senator Mitt Romney is urging the people who are putting together a Salt Lake City Winter Olympics bid to go after the 2030 event not the 2034 date. Romney would prefer a 2030 bid because he is getting older. Romney ran the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and was put into that position after it was revealed that members of the Salt Lake City committee bribed certain International Olympic Committee delegates to get their votes. In 2002, Salt Lake City organizers had the money to hold the event thanks to a bailout from President Bill Clinton’s administration of about a billion dollars after Romney pleaded with Congressional leaders to get money into Salt Lake City as soon as possible to save the Games.
An Olympics bidder needs an incredible amount of government and TV support in the form of billions of dollars of public money and lots of TV money. The Olympic bidder also needs marketing money. In Salt Lake City’s case, the United States TV and platform network, Comcast, would pour billions of dollars into the Olympics in exchange for programming. No government wanted to subsidize a 2026 Winter Olympics bid although Italy relaxed its stance and did help out Cortina bidders get that event. The IOC President Thomas Bach declared that the press is the enemy of the IOC and was the reason cities pulled out of Olympics bidding. The IOC failed to find enough interested cities for the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics and was forced to give the 2024 Games to Paris and 2028 Games to Los Angeles. The IOC identified Queensland in Australia as the perfect spot for the 2032 Summer Olympics and seemingly awarded the area the event without a bidding process. Backers in Sapporo, Japan, Vancouver, Canada and Barcelona, Spain might go after the 2030 event. The race is on.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
