Quote:
Originally Posted by Bunk
Simply, it's much cheaper than building a brand new ski jump facility. Is it ideal? no, but it's a pragmatic solution to reduce cost. , cost is not a City of Calgary taxpayer cost, either. It will be games revenue and Federal security costs. It's also not really a marquee event like the Gold Medal Hockey game.
Also, having some specific events away from the host city is not uncommon. Equestrian in 2008 was in Hong Kong, Soccer in London was all over England.
|
How do you know it's cheaper though? You have no idea if it will be cheaper. Whistler hasn't agreed to anything yet. I'm sure their philosophy will be no different than ours...let's get as much free money as possible. They've already said they want us to pay for their new housing project. They've already casually mentioned a pretty long wish list.
Equestrian events were held in Hong Kong because it was the only safe place for foreign horses to be. They had already established quarantine locations there from their horse racing industry so it was actually the only place they could safely hold those events.
And the London venues were at least relatively close to London. You could still fly to London and drive to most of those events. As well the main matches were in London including the medal games. And they still had to shrink the venues because they only sold about half the tickets. I think at one point soccer was the only event to not sell out.
Having to fly to Whistler will cost ticket sales for sure. If you're flying there to watch your kid jump you're not going to pick up a couple casual tickets for the other events a two hour drive and an hour flight away.
It just seems painfully obvious to me. If you don't have a higher level of government that agrees to fund cost over runs like the BC government did in 2010, you do not do this.