Another one says no to the IOC.
The Lake Tahoe, Reno, Nevada area is not going to bother bidding for the 2030 Winter Olympics. That leaves Salt Lake City, Utah and Denver, Colorado as possible United States candidates for the 2030 event. The Reno-Tahoe Winter Games Coalition concluded that it is not financially feasible for the region and declined a bid invitation from the United States Olympic Committee to participate. The chance of hosting an Olympics just isn’t worth the expense. Denver might have a problem getting government support as Colorado Governor-elect Jared Polis has said he is not much of a fan of the population picking up the debt of an Olympics event.
The Olympics brand has been thoroughly devaluated in the past two decades. In 1999, ten American cities wanted the 2012 Summer Olympics, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Cincinnati, the Baltimore/Washington area and the Tampa Bay region. In 1999, all of those areas went after the Olympics despite knowing the vote-buying scandal in Salt Lake City when Utah went after the 2002 Winter Games. The 1996 Atlanta Olympics organizers knew that some IOC members were “sleaze bags” who could sell their votes, according to a United States Olympics Committee report in 1999. The same report also found evidence of vote rigging in Toronto’s bid for the 1996 Olympics. So why does any city want the huge headaches and relatively minimal financial benefits of hosting the Olympics? Because it is a big event, an event costing millions upon millions of dollars. Utah has some Olympics experience. Salt Lake City businesses reported a drop-off in revenues during the 2002 Winter Games. Despite all of this, some folks still want the Olympics.
