IOC confident it can reduce Calgary’s 2026 Winter Games costs

An eyebrow raising statement has been released by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with regards to Calgary’s $4.6-billion draft budget for the 2026 Winter Games.

Without even knowing all the details, the IOC said it’s confident it can find even more savings, arguing the Calgary Bid Exploration Committee didn’t have all the information it needed.

According to Rob Livingstone, producer at gamesbids.com, which follows Olympic bid news, the committee said Calgary’s estimates are modeled on Vancouver 2010, and do not benefit from the new approach of organizing the games.

“They didn’t believe Calgary had all the information they needed, hadn’t been leveraging Agenda 2020 which is the reform package, and don’t have all the information that the IOC will be releasing on July 11 when they do further reforms for the Winter Games bid,” he said.

The IOC statement said there is a working group looking into ways of reducing the operational budget of the Olympic Winter Games. It argued, for example, it’s saved more than $2-billion for the Tokyo 2020 construction budget and has kept the operational budget lower, at $1.6-billion.

Sion, Switzerland is the only city which has officially launched a bid for the 2026 games, but it has a referendum coming up which could bring that to a quick end.

The IOC has had a hard time finding potential hosts lately. Three-of-five bids dropped out of the 2024 Olympic Games bid and four-of-six left the 2022 race.

The number one reason has been public concern the games would be too expensive to host.

Livingstone admitted it’s extremely unusual for the IOC to comment in this way, but he believes the organization is trying to better control its message.

“Because they’ve stayed out of it, the message has sort of evolved, their message has evolved on its own or has been impacted or developed by other people, third-parties that they don’t control and that’s been a bad thing for them, I think,” he said, adding this is a new age of Olympic bids.

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