Winter Olympics priciest ever held
By Mark Shaffer
Arizona Republic
SALT LAKE CITY — The mood is festive for hundreds of Utah Jazz fans as they exit the Delta Center, walk 100 feet and wait for light rail to take them to their neighborhoods near downtown.
And those who are driving home have more lanes to choose from and more interchanges on the recently widened Interstate 15.
It's all part of the federal largess that has sledded into Salt Lake City in preparation for next month's Winter Olympics, the most expensive Winter Games in history.
Consider:
• The total budget is $1.9 billion; it climbs to almost $3 billion including the transportation projects.
• The cost will be about $40 million for opening and closing ceremonies as well as housing and perks for International Olympic Committee members and their families.
• NBC is paying $748 million to broadcast the Games.
• This year's tab dwarfs the $1.14 billion spent on the games in Nagano, Japan, four years ago and, with dollar adjustments for inflation, is more than five times the cost of the last Winter Games in the United States, in 1980 in Lake Placid, N.Y.
U.S. Sen. John McCain, the most vocal critic in Congress of Olympics spending, called all the expenses a "snow job" on the American public.
Utah public officials say that the light rail and highway expansion would have happened anyway; that the rest of the spending is just the cost of doing business in the imperial world of the International Olympic Committee.
It is a world in which the $40 million to be spent on ceremonies and housing and other perks for IOC officials and their families is $7 million more than conducting the athletic events. And it's a world in which nearly $300 million is being spent on security since Sept. 11.
McCain, R-Ariz., said in a speech on the Senate floor last month that he has no problems with the spending on security.
"A good part of this ... (cost) — and there is more in this appropriations bill — has nothing to do with security," McCain said, citing a lengthy Sports Illustrated investigation that documented such other expenses as $30 million for parking lots, $25 million for buses, $16 million for airport improvements, $16 million for increased federal services, and $11 million for monitoring of infectious diseases as well as for food inspection and mobile medical-response teams.
"It's a fair question for people to ask, 'Is it worth it or not?' " Salt Lake Organizing Committee head Mitt Romney said at a news conference last month, adding that he expected the games to break even financially. "My own position is the games make sense not as a moneymaking enterprise but as a statement for peace."
Josh Ewing, a spokesman for Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, said that a large share of the money for the transportation projects is "for things that would have happened anyway and were just speeded up because of the Olympics."
"These are expensive times that we are living in," Ewing said. "Plus, Salt Lake City is the largest metropolitan area to host the Winter Olympics, and we've had to do a lot to prepare for them."
But Kevin Wamsley, director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario, said the amount of money spent on the Salt Lake City Games is "ridiculous beyond belief."
For instance, the IOC decided that the cauldron for opening ceremonies wasn't opulent enough at Rice-Eccles Stadium. A prominent Salt Lake City banker donated an additional $8 million for that improvement.
"There are just a tremendous amount of resources wasted," Wamsley said. "It's wonderful for the coaches and athletes and wealthy spectators, but you wonder what positive impact on the world the corporations could have if that money was spent on health care or education or sports in general."
Wamsley said the main reason for the extravagance of the Winter Games has been the dramatic increase in money paid by television companies for broadcast rights. Only $20.7 million was paid to broadcast the 1980 Lake Placid Games, while the Salt Lake City Games fetched $748 million from NBC, Wamsley said.
"Now, it's like the days when the Roman emperors had their bread and circuses, when 10,000 would fight on the Coliseum floor," Wamsley said of the IOC.
John Lucas, a former Penn State professor who has written four books on Olympic history, said another reason for the skyrocketing costs is that the number of athletes in the Winter Games has doubled in the past 20 years.
That's because the IOC set up a $1 billion fund to subsidize the attendance of athletes from underdeveloped countries.
About 800 such athletes will participate in the Salt Lake City Games, Lucas said.
Other factors include building more venues and buying the latest technology for scoring, transportation, medical assistance and drug-testing, said John Findling, an Indiana University professor and Olympics scholar.
Much of the financial burden for the Salt Lake City Games will be borne by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, the tax-exempt organization putting on the Olympics.
In addition to paying for all of the ceremonies, the group will reimburse Utah taxpayers $100 million for building venues and will finance the Olympic Village, where athletes will stay — at an estimated cost of $38 million.
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