Vancouver Organizing Committee chairman Jack Poole, left, and CEO John Furlong address a news conference in Vancouver, Tuesday, May 8, 2007. An aggressive plan to sell almost all of the tickets for the 2010 Winter Olympics, as well as the richest broadcast contract in Olympic history, are helping Games organizers meet their budget targets and possibly exceed them, organizers say. (Sam Leung/Canadian Press)
Viewpoint: The Olympic Insider
VANOC is off-base about being on-budget
Sticking to the 2010 Winter Olympics budget is easy when you keep rewriting the books
Last Updated Wed., May 9, 2007
by Michael Drapack
On budget: can there be two more pleasing words to the ears of people who build stuff?
If you’re just putting a new deck off the back of your house, it’s good to be on budget.
If you’re spending over $1 billion to host the Olympics, it’s damned good to be on budget.
And such was the message this week from those very folks.
The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Winter Olympics released its much-anticipated business plan, and guess what? It’s all on time and it’s all on budget.
Too bad that’s not entirely true.
In today’s rapid-fire 24-hour news cycle, anybody with a message often subscribes to the practice of repeat-ism. That is, if you say something often and forceful enough, people will soon believe it (think ‘Mission Accomplished’).
For the longest time, VANOC head John Furlong and crew have been saying the capital plan for venue construction is on budget. And it is. Well, now it is.
Let’s be clear and honest about this … for once. It’s on track for the second budget, a revised budget that had to be increased, with taxpayer’s money, by $110 million last year. You may be excused for not being aware of this because media reports seem never to challenge VANOC’s claim it is on budget, or bother to point out the $580 million tab for venue construction is a revised one.
Once those venues are built, it will cost $1.62 billion to run the 2010 Olympics and Paralympics. And guess what? This too is on budget. A revised budget.
The original one first proposed in the 2002 bid book said the operation of the Games would cost $847 million. Now keep in mind VANOC says this budget is balanced, that revenues match expenses. But many of the folks who underestimated (by about 100 per cent) the revenues and expenses five years ago put this latest budget together.
This is really shocking when you consider that when cities bid for the Olympics, they benefit from all kinds of technology transfers from previous host cities and even seminars by the IOC on how to budget for the Olympics.
Further, VANOC states the operation of the games will be covered by private-sector revenue sources. Not quite. Listed in the business plan under private revenue is $40 million of public money from the governments of British Columbia and Canada for the Paralympics. And $15 million from the government-owned Insurance Corporation of British Columbia is also listed as private revenue under domestic sponsorships.
You only get one chance to be on budget. Otherwise, what’s the point of having one? Increasing the budget because you need more money sounds more like a line of credit. You can always claim to be on budget when you’re re-writing it.
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About The Insider
Michael Drapack is The Insider, a journalist with intimate knowledge of the inner workings of both the IOC and the movers and shakers in the Olympic movement worldwide. Working as a producer with CBC for the past 12 years, Michael has covered a plethora of Olympic issues and has helped Sports Online break down the decisions surrounding the awarding of the 2010 Games to Vancouver and 2012 Olympics to London. He's 2-0 when it comes to predicting the outcome of Olympic host city races.
