An internal document of the organizing committee, which “MO12345LEMONDE” has obtained, details all the budgetary variations of the Olympic and Paralympic project.
by Nicolas Lepeltier
For more than two weeks, Paris 2024 has been a work of pedagogy. The stake is up to par. It is, for the Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (COJOP), to explain why the budget he must submit to the board of directors, Monday, December 12, believed 400 million euros in Two years to now stand at 4.38 billion euros. Explain why this same budget increased by 10.1 % compared to the last revision, at the end of 2020, but derived by 20 % since the allocation of games in September 2017.
Admittedly, the inflation that has been the world economy since the start of the war in Ukraine was impossible to predict, and Paris 2024 has not escaped. The organizer also recognizes “underestimated expenses”, especially in terms of security, and “poorly anticipated costs”. But he argues that thanks to the “ant work” he has carried out for nine months on each line of his budget, he has generated several tens of millions of euros in savings.
And then, he advances, commercial revenues will be stronger than expected (an additional 127 million euros in sponsorship and 143 million in ticket office). What “present a balanced budget”, as the Paris 2024 boss, Tony Estanguet, on December 2.
What to consider the future with serenity as well. After all, “London 2012 had adjusted its budget by 16 % in September 2010 outside of any period of inflation”, it is written in a note on the budget revision presented on December 12, that MO12345lemonde was obtained. In the document, the organizing committee explains in the preamble to “an almost final knowledge of the costs and risks of the project”.
The assertion makes this expert of Olympic questions jump. “How can we say that when 50 % of the markets remain to be concluded for Paris 2024?” He is surprised, also stressing the fact that if the organizer’s expenses are certain, his additional recipes remain for the Moment if not hypothetical, at least not yet contracted.
The uncertainty of inflation
serene, the cojop retorts in particular that its ticket office is based on a more prudent site filling rate than expected (76 % against 85 % until then) and that opening to the general public, from the 1st December, aroused a strong enthusiasm, with, on date, more than a million registrations for the draw.
Another element of uncertainty: inflation. The rise in prices will not have finished making its effects in 2023 and 2024 – even if the peak seems to be behind us, agree the economists. The reserve for superinflation of the last eighteen months, budgeted up to 75 million, details the note of the COJOP, will she suffice, while the rise in prices for the year 2022 only cost 121 million euros to COJOP ?
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