Report forecasts economic impact in the billions if 2034 Olympics come to Utah

The Olympic Rings are pictured outside Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City on Monday, January 15, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

If Utah hosts the 2034 Olympics — and state leaders are confident it will — the economic impact could be about $6.6 billion, according to a new report from the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

The report comes as a delegation of athletes, elected officials and staff with the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games is gearing up for a July 24 trip to Paris , where they’ll argue Utah’s case to the International Olympic Committee. The IOC will make its announcement later that day.

If the IOC selects Utah — according to the Deseret News , it’s the committee’s preferred city for 2034 — it would be an economic boon for the state, with impacts seen over the next decade. According to the report, which was released Wednesday, the Olympics would generate:

• A cumulative total economic impact of about $6.6 billion and almost $3.9 million in state gross domestic product, or GDP.
• Over 42,000 job-years (essentially one job for one year) and about $2.5 billion in personal income.
• Around $2.6 billion in new spending.

The economic impacts will be felt over the next 12 years, including the year after the Olympics, according to the report, with about two-thirds coming during the games.

Budget unveiled for 2034 Olympics in Utah

Part of the reason why Utah is such an appealing place to host the winter games is existing infrastructure, including the Olympic Oval in Kearns, Utah Olympic Park in Park City, and the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center in Midway.

The state’s existing infrastructure also means Utah won’t have to spend what other countries sometimes shell out in preparation.

“The organizing committee will have to make much lower, much less capital expenditure for the 2034 games,” said John Downen, senior research fellow at the Kem C. Gardner Institute and lead author of the report.

Downen said the permanent infrastructure investment for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City was $286.7 million. The expected expenditure for the 2034 games would be $31.2 million, which by Olympic standards is “modest,” the report notes.

Still, hosting the Olympics can be a financially risky endeavor — a recent report from Oxford University found that cost overruns are the norm for the games, “past, present, and future.”

“They are the only project type that never delivered on budget, ever,” the report stated.

“We don’t know what we don’t know, as we move forward in this planning and how things are going to evolve. But I think as a whole, you take on that risk,” said Brett Hopkins, chief financial officer of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games, who told reporters the current budget has gone through dozens of iterations.

“We want to put forth a budget that we have confidence in,” he said.

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