Rogge: No Ideal Time For USOC To Submit Bid To Be Olympic Host

IOC President Jacques Rogge yesterday said that “there’s no ideal time for the United States to make another bid to host an Olympics,” according to Beth Harris of the AP. With international and U.S. Olympic leaders “so far unable to resolve a financial dispute that is blocking any U.S. bid for the games, it might not happen until 2024.” Rogge yesterday spoke at USC “a day before the IOC Conference on Women and Sport opens” in L.A. He said, “We have some spots where we still want to go, like Africa.” USOC CEO Scott Blackmun said that “any future domestic bids would be open to all comers rather than conducting a lengthy formal bid process.” Blackmun: “So much of it depends on the cities that are interested, it depends on the leaders in those cities, it depends on our friends in Washington and how supportive they’re going to be. It depends on what is the mood of the International Olympic Committee. Until we get these revenue sharing discussions behind us, I think that’s going to be the big question in the room.” He added the USOC will not consider another bid “unless or until we have resolved our negotiations with the IOC.” Blackmun also “declined to say when the next round of talks on the revenue-sharing dispute between the IOC and USOC would be held.” Blackmun: “It’s fair to say we are making incremental progress” (AP, 2/15).

MONEY MAKER? FOXSPORTSWEST.com’s Michael Martinez noted Rogge “believes there's a chance the Summer Olympics will turn a profit.” But the suggestion is “at odds with a recent report by Britain's Sky News that the actual cost of staging the Olympics will be five times the figure originally provided when London won the bid in 2005.” Sky News reported the projected figure of about $3.71B (all figures U.S.) will now be more than $18.8B, and could reach $37.7B. Still, Rogge said that the figures “are separate and that the budget barely has budged.” Rogge: "There is an operational budget that stands at [$3.1B]. The operational budget will break even or even yield a profit. There is an infrastructure budget, paid by the government, that's [$14.6B], and this will include the remediation of East London, the building of new roads and the legacy of the future. But it's not five times” (FOXSPORTSWEST.com, 2/15).