In Wednesday’s early morning hours, thousands are expected to start arriving at Washington Square Park in downtown Salt Lake City for what some have taken to calling Utah’s largest pajama party.
At 3 a.m. MDT video boards will light up in plenty of time to broadcast Salt Lake City officials’ final presentation to the International Olympic Committee in Paris at 3:30 a.m.
By 4 a.m. Salt Lake is expected to be formally named host of the 2034 Winter Olympic Games.
Then, Salt Lake City mayor Erin Mendenhall said, the city “is going to party like it’s 2002.”
The celebration won’t just be in Utah.
The IOC announcement will also formalize what U.S. Olympic leaders are calling the “American decade” in which Los Angeles will host the 2028 Summer Games and Salt Lake City the 2034 Winter Olympics, creating a unique opportunity to raise the profile of Olympic sports with the American public, especially younger generations, and corporate sponsors.
“This is in my mind a golden age of sport in the U.S. to raise the relevancy, the profile and the opportunities to participate” said Catherine Raney Norman, chairperson of the Salt Lake City Olympic bid who also competed in four Olympic Games as a speed skater. “And it’s incumbent on us as leaders to make sure we capitalize on that and not miss that window of opportunity.”
It will be the first time the same country has held two Games within a six-year window since the Atlanta held the 1996 Summer Games and Utah the 2002 Winter Olympics.
‘We are affectionately calling it, this is ‘The Decade.’ This very well may be the single most important decade in sport in this country,’ USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland said. “And we see a massive obligation and an incredible opportunity for us to showcase, not a single sport, not two sports, but the breadth of sport and what it stands for.
“And what it represents and what an important part of society it can be in the development of humans and in the development of communities.”
It is a decade that will further highlight Los Angeles’ status as a destination for major sporting events. In the 10 years leading up to Los Angeles’ third Olympic Games, the region will have hosted two Super Bowls, 2022 and 2027, and the 2026 World Cup.
“Look, I’m more excited about the Los Angeles decade which culminates in LA 2028,” said Casey Wasserman, chairman of LA 28, the local Olympic organizing committee. “Not that I’m not excited about the opportunity for Salt Lake. But you know, you look at the city I live in, the city I, the reason I’m doing this is because LA and if you think about the things that will have happened in the 10 years previous and leading up to, you know, obviously multiple Super Bowls, World Cups, all the way up to the Olympics, and a stunning array of other events here, all-star games and the like, I think in many ways this is the Los Angeles decade.”
For the IOC, the American decade represents six years of safe harbor after a series of Games marred by billions in cost overruns, corruption scandals, and widespread criticism over doing business with authoritarian regimes in Russia and China and prioritizing the bottom line or human rights abuses.
Six of the last 10 Summer and Winter Olympics held in non-authoritarian nations, six have finished in the red with a combined deficit of $4.9 billion. A seventh Games, the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, reportedly broke even.
The last seven Games have averaged 158.7 percent overrun from their original budget, according to an Oxford University study earlier this year.
“What I hear at the IOC level is there’s a flight to safety,” said David M. Carter, a sports marketing professor at USC’s Marshall School of business and founder of the Sports Business Group, a sports and entertainment consulting firm. “They know they need Games that will be run well, will be well regarded, that have the ability to generate tremendous revenue and show well on a global stage. They’ve taken risks and we don’t need to read off the list from Sochi to Rio to Beijing and Tokyo, They’ve taken a fair amount of global risks at a time when a lot of international cities are not as inclined to bid and you have a decade in which you would have, you have LA and Salt Lake City that’s certainly going to help them with their re-boot and part of that relevance we’ve seen is the new sports they’re being involved to be younger and hipper.
“They call it the American decade but what I think it’s really about is taking the proverbial safety and making sure you have a couple of Games that are highly unlikely compared to other bid cities to have major problems.”
There are already signs that the American decade has been welcomed on Madison Avenue.
LA 28 has a projected goal of generating $2.5 billion in domestic sponsorship revenue, and Wasserman has said that the 2028 Games have already attracted more contracted revenue than the Paris Games will have in total revenue.
“American sponsors coming back in and wanting to be part of the movement,” said Rick Burton, a Syracuse sports marketing professor and the former chief marketing officer for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
“We’re a pretty good media market so to have these two bites of the apple as it were is exciting at the level you can think the business side of the Olympics should be pretty excited.”
Two games in the U.S. where they’re going to have pretty strong control over things. When games are overseas that facilitation that big corporations like to have. That kind of presence can’t be understated when you have games in LA and Salt Lake and so you would look at certain brands say, ‘Ok, we know how to do that U.S. really well. We sometimes struggle in other countries.’ This is where America is both a plus and a negative. This is as American as you can get and we’re going to be there.’”
But economists and Olympic historians also caution that the success of the American decade isn’t a given.
“It’s certainly an interesting term to use because it assumes, a couple of things. One of them that the games will be successful and America will benefit,” said Robert Baade, a Lake Forest College economics professor who has written extensively on business side of the Olympics. “And when you think about the United States relative to other countries, the thing with the U.S. is the U.S. has often been referred to as hosting the business games, their motivation is to not bring the world together but to line their own pockets. And so when you used the term the American decade, I’m not sure exactly if that’s an appropriate term. What it does (suggest) is that the United States in some way has been distinguished through the awarding of two games within a 10 year period. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on the games’ outcome.
“I think what does that mean exactly? Is that part of the hyperbole that we often associate with the games or will it truly be something that’s favorable and beneficial to the US. We’ll see.
“American decade? Yeah, if it really does result in some real benefit to the U.S. and I’m not sure we can automatically draw that conclusion. So we’ll see.”
Raney Norman recalled some recent advice Sen. Mitt Romney gave her. Romney rescued the scandal ridden 2002 Games that were projected a $379 million budget shortfall but ended up reporting a $100 million surplus.
“Ten years are going to go by quickly,” she recalled Romney saying. “Maintaining that support and excitement it’s incumbent for us to continue to do that and not take it for granted.”
