UPDATE: Salt Lake City has been invited to enter into "targeted dialogue" to host the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in 2034.
The French Alps and Salt Lake City-Utah invited into respective Targeted Dialogues to host the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games 2030 and 2034. pic.twitter.com/t3XJyyVH8P
— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) November 29, 2023
Salt Lake City named preferred host for the 2034 Olympic Winter Games. A lot of hard work has gone into making this happen.
— Lt. Gov. Deidre M. Henderson (@LGHendersonUtah) November 29, 2023
We will be ready to bring athletes across the world once again to the greatest snow on earth!#SLCWinterOlympics pic.twitter.com/zHyzcNZJDZ
Tom Kelly, spokesperson for Salt Lake City’s Olympic bid committee, said he’s confident the IOC will tap the group to move into targeted dialogue.
“It’s really a continuation of what we’ve been doing, but a little bit more formalized,” Kelly said. “We feel that our bid for 2030 and 2034 is quite advanced. We have 100% of our guarantees in place. We have 100% political support within the state. We have public opinion polls that are running in excess of 80% favorable. So we have a lot of things that are really checked off already.”
Targeted dialogue represents a deep dive into planning a potential future Olympics.
“The discussions that we would have leading up to an eventual announcement would really be just fine tuning those things, looking at the operational arrangements that we have, looking at the venue plans that we have, and just checking off in a little bit more detail the elements that we’ve put together," Kelly said. "I kind of liken it to oftentimes you’ll see a business announce an acquisition and the acquisition is proposed, but it’s not closed and it closes at a future time. That would kind of be the status that we would be in with targeted dialogue.”
At the end of targeted dialogue, host cities may be put up for election by the IOC, which would officially grant a future Olympics.
IOC Chairman Thomas Bach has said they intend to award the 2030 and 2034 Games next summer.
Robert Livingstone with GamesBids.com predicts “Salt Lake City will be the only bid elevated to targeted dialogue for 2034 and by March will be declared the preferred candidate to appear on the election ballot.”
Utah’s Winter Olympic bid is the only one recognized by the IOC for 2034.
Sweden, Switzerland, and France are all vying for 2030. Utah is open to 2030, but has long said hosting in 2034 is preferred.
“There’s only 18 months between the Los Angeles Games in 2028 and the Winter Games in 2030, and that’s just not a very big gap to do a Games in the same country," Kelly said. "There’s just so many overlapping elements, most notably, the funding of the Games with commercial sponsors and also with donors. So we just feel that putting a little bit of breathing room and going out to 2034 is going to be a much better situation for everyone involved.”
Another Olympics in Salt Lake City is expected to cost over $2 billion, and organizers have said no taxpayer money will be needed.
The targeted dialogue process was established by the IOC in 2019, as part of sweeping changes to the bidding process.
“This system has less definition than the old system, but it also is more of a modern business dialogue," Kelly said. "Whereas in the past, there was a lot of ceremony in conjunction with it. It was open to a lot of potential scandal and fraud because of the way that it was structured. Today though, it’s a much cleaner system.”
Regardless of Wednesday’s decision, the public is invited to a cauldron lighting ceremony Friday, Dec. 1, at 5:45 p.m. at the plaza outside Rice-Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah.
