Los Angeles hosted the Summer Games in 1932 and again in 1984, when organizers led by Peter Ueberroth reinvented Olympic financing, leaning heavily on broadcast fees and corporate sponsorships and making a profit of more than $200 million.
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“Los Angeles is the ideal Olympic city”, Mayor Eric Garcetti said in an email.
One of the largest newspapers in the United States seems to be throwing its weight behind the city of Los Angeles in its bid to win the heart of the United States Olympic Committee for a second time. But numerous venues are already in place here, which could help make the Games in Los Angeles billions cheaper to put on than they would be nearly anywhere else.
Boston’s Olympic boosters also promised the games would generate surplus money. “I think it’s who we are”, Garcetti said of LA’s Olympics proposal.
A $4.1 billion Los Angeles bid would not cost significantly less than the .595 billion Boston games, though experience has shown that when it comes to the Olympics, projection and reality can be far apart. The move had been expected since rumblings began to grow in recent months that Boston, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s original choice, might drop out in the face of widespread public opposition to the effort.
Boston had proposed a budget under $5 billion – considered frugal for the Olympics – but still struggled to sell the public on the idea it wouldn’t need major public funding to host the games. San Francisco and Washington, D.C. had also submitted bids.
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Garcetti told the Times that Los Angeles is still negotiating with the USOC. The worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) will make a decision on the 2024 host city by mid-September.
