It's Official! Los Angeles is U.S. Choice for 2024 Olympics

The City Council voted unanimously today to move forward with a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, prompting the U.S. Olympic Committee to formally name Los Angeles as its official bidder for the athletic spectacle.

“It is my distinct honor to formally name the city of Los Angeles as the U.S. bid to host the 2024 Olympics,” United States Olympics Committee CEO Scott Blackmun said at a beach-side news conference in Santa Monica about an hour after the council’s vote.

Mayor Eric Garcetti, citing the city’s success hosting the Games twice previously, said, “This is a great day for Los Angeles and a great day for the Olympic movement.”

“I think it was a fabulous vote,” Garcetti said at City Hall shortly after the council decision. “We all know the next two years are about fleshing out the details, but this is in our DNA. We know how to do Olympics, we know how to do them well, we know how to do them economically ... “

Councilman Paul Krekorian said prior to the vote that “this is a great Olympic city.”

“Let Paris and Rome and whoever else who wants to compete know, we’re in this to win it, and I think we will,” Krekorian said.

Council members agreed to back the bid after city attorneys assured them the city will not be making any immediate financial commitments.

Deputy City Attorney Jim Clark said he was “in constant contact with the lawyer for the (LA24) bid committee up to 11 o’clock last night.”

“We exchanged lists of things that would have to be covered by negotiations. His first item was the financial commitment, if any, of the city. So he recognizes by this action this council is not committing the city financially at all,” Clark said.

Chief Administrative Analyst Sharon Tso said the city will still have an opportunity to weigh in on the proposed budget of the Games, and any sports venue plans or use of city facilities.

LA24 officials estimate the cost of hosting the 2024 Olympics in Los Angeles would be $4.1 billion, or $4.6 billion when a roughly $400 million contingency fund and insurance are included.

They project revenue from the Games will bring in $4.8 billion, resulting in a profit of $161 million going to LA24.

The budget anticipates the International Olympic Committee will contribute $1.5 billion, or 31 percent of the revenue, with domestic sponsorships and ticket revenue making up the other two-thirds. The bid packet also included details about how the Olympics might be operated.

The Olympic Village would be next to the Los Angeles River in Lincoln Heights -- in a Union Pacific rail yard known as the “Piggyback Yard” -- and calls for track-and-field and the opening and closing ceremonies to be held at a renovated Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

The bid also designates sports venue clusters in downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley, coastal areas like Santa Monica, the area around UCLA and the South Bay.

The International Olympic Committee is expected to make a final decision on a host city in September 2017.

Potential foreign bidders include Rome; Nairobi, Kenya; Casablanca, Morocco; Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa; Doha, Qatar; Melbourne, Australia; Paris; Hamburg, Germany; and St. Petersburg, Russia.

The United States did not make a bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, which were awarded to Tokyo in 2013. Los Angeles sought to be the U.S. candidate to host the 2016 Games but was beaten by Chicago, whose bid was ultimately rejected by the International Olympic Committee in favor of Rio de Janeiro.

Los Angeles is looking to join London as the only cities to host the Summer Olympics three times. Los Angeles was the site of the 1932 and 1984 Games.

The Summer Olympics were last held in the United States in 1996, when Atlanta was the site.

City News Service