Salt Lake’s Profit Soars

The 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympic Games generated a $100.1-million surplus, organizers will announce today, nearly doubling a prior profit projection in what is sure to serve as a boost for any future bid from a U.S. city to stage the Games.

In April, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee said the Games had yielded a $56-million surplus.

Now, in preparing the books for today’s final meeting of SLOC’s board of directors and the organizing committee’s Oct. 31 going-out-of-business date, officials said Tuesday that the $56 million projection was low, citing a wide variety of accounting, legal, marketing and charitable matters. The revised accounts include $16 million in “available funds” from such sources as unused contingency accounts and savings in venue restoration and litigation costs, and $9 million in surplus telecommunications and copying support.

“We’ve demonstrated anew that not only can we show the world magical Games but we can do it in a very successful financial system,” Fraser Bullock, the current SLOC chief executive officer, said Tuesday.

The next time the Games can come back to the U.S. is in 2012. Two U.S. cities are vying to be the sole U.S. candidate for those Games, New York and San Francisco. The U.S. Olympic Committee will choose in November. The International Olympic Committee will choose the 2012 site in 2005. Moscow, Madrid and a number of other cities are also expected to seek the 2012 Games.

The odds of the United States playing host to the Games in 2012 remain long. The Olympics have already been staged here four times in the last 22 years--in Lake Placid, N.Y. (1980, winter), Los Angeles (1984, summer), Atlanta (1996, summer) and in Salt Lake City.

In addition, a current of anti-U.S. sentiment runs within the IOC--a sentiment exacerbated in recent years by the corruption scandal tied to Salt Lake’s winning bid for the 2002 Games.

Also, in the aftermath of last September’s terrorist attacks, security concerns have emerged as a major factor in staging the Games in the United States.

Nonetheless, the IOC depends heavily on U.S.-based corporations. Seven of 10 U.S. companies are among the IOC’s top sponsors and its chief financial backer is NBC.

And, at $100.1 million, the magnitude of the Salt Lake surplus adds to the U.S. legacy for staging financially robust Games. The 1984 L.A. Games resulted in a $232.5-million surplus. The 1996 Atlanta Games yielded a slight surplus, about $10 million; the Atlanta organizing committee, however, decided to build a stadium and then reconfigure it after the Games for baseball.

At the height of the corruption scandal, in early 1999, the SLOC board hired venture capitalist Mitt Romney to take over as CEO. He brought in Bullock, another venture capitalist, and together they wooed sponsors while trimming the budget. Revenue ultimately totaled about $1.3 billion.