The 2024 Olympic Games are just a few weeks away, but already, Utah is gearing up to potentially host the 2034 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City.
While Salt Lake City hasn’t officially been named the host of the 2034 winter games, organizers in Utah are getting their finances in order and a privately funded budget of $3.99 billion has been proposed to the International Olympic Committee. The city is the preferred bidder for 2034, but the committee is set to make a final decision on some future game hosts during meetings at the Paris Olympics next month.
The proposed budget is cheaper than the summer 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles in 2028 — by almost $4 billion — though Winter Olympics are typically cheaper than the summer games. Additionally, this number is significantly lower than Paris’ budget, which is estimated to cost at least $9 billion. It also comes nowhere near close some whopping figures in the past, including Tokyo’s delayed 2021 games at $15.4 billion and the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang at $12.9 billion.
Salt Lake City has a promising chance of hosting the games, specifically because no new permanent venues will need to be built. Other games in the past had to spend millions on new stadiums, with Tokyo dropping $520 million on an aquatics center and South Korea spending $110 million on a temporary stadium.
Utah previously hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, marking the eighth Olympics to be hosted in the U.S. The games finished with a budgetary surplus of $40 million. If the games do return to Salt Lake City in 2034, there could be 40% more events than there were in 2002.