FUNDING THE OLYMPIC GAMES
The Reno Tahoe Winter Games Coalition is a private 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. The organization relies completely on donations, grants, fundraising events and management of sports events for funding.
One of the critical elements for all bids, and one which has derailed more than one otherwise first class bid, is ensuring the timely availability and sufficient level of bid funding. For a bid to progress effectively, it is important to have sufficient funds to attend key USOC and IOC meetings, to retain sufficient staff to plan and conduct bid business, to conduct necessary planning components for the bid, to prepare needed promotional material and to maintain and conduct all of the needed media relations activities associated with the bid.
It is a key strategy for the Reno-Tahoe bid to make its intentions known early and aggressively once candidates are requested by the USOC.
Entitled The Olympic Program (TOP), large international corporations like Coca-Cola and Xerox sponsor the Games through their involvement with the International Olympic Committee. Hundreds of millions of dollars are passed through to Games organizing committees from the IOC's TOP sponsorship program. To balance the budgetary necessities of running a Games, it will be necessary for a Reno/Tahoe Games organizing committee, in partnership with the USOC, to raise approximately $300 million from all other sources to conduct the Games. While this is a large sum of money, there are a number of areas where these funds can be developed, including:
- U.S. based sponsors in categories not reserved for the TOP Program
- Western regional (California, Nevada and elsewhere) sponsors in non-TOP sponsorship categories
- Nevada-based companies (including Las Vegas)
- Local Reno-based companies and organizations
As was evident in Utah, the range of possible companies in the categories noted above is large and diverse. With the proximity of Northern California and the Bay Area, the potential for significant financial support from companies based there is substantial. In these categories, the individual sponsorships are priced from $5 million to $30 million and can include a number of value-in-kind (products and/or services) supporters. Much of the corporate, governmental, community and other support can be in the form of donated products and services needed to conduct the Games, many in areas of supply and products readily donated by regional companies.
One of the concerns for many Winter Olympic Games is the relatively low number of potential ticket buyers within a 4-5 hour radius of the Games site. Typically, the population density and concentration within that radius around many Olympic-level mountain resorts is light. For Reno-Tahoe, in addition to the core population of over 350,000 in the area, over 13 million people from Northern California can be included within “day-trip” distance.
In the past, non-local ticket buyers have been generally limited to no more than 20% of tickets sold. For many potential Winter Games venues, the local base is not sufficient to purchase the remaining 80% of the tickets at the level of prices which are now established. This will not be a problem in Reno-Tahoe.
