Boosters initially had claimed that a Winter Games in their Arctic city would cost around NOK 9.5 billion (nearly USD 2 billion).
Instead, the report from Den Norske Veritas (DNV), Advensia and Samfunns- og næringsforskning AS revealed figures showing a price tag of NOK 19.1 billion. That in turn would require a state guarantee of NOK 28.6 billion. That's because a Winter Games would cost nearly NOK 29 million, but ticket and sponsor income would reduce the net cost to just over NOK 19 billion.
The huge gap between the auditors' and boosters' estimates is explained mostly by the booster group Tromsø 2018’s failure to include costs for security, expected to amount to as much as NOK 1.5 billion.
Nor did the booster group take into account costs for an Olympic Village, because they claimed private developers would handle that. Rules set by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), however, demand that athlete housing costs be included in a state guarantee for financing.
The high cost will make it difficult for most politicians to justify such an investment when many Norwegians already are demanding better schools, nursing homes, health care and a variety of other services for which the government rarely can find enough funding.
The Progress Party, Norway's most conservative, has been opposed to an Olympics in Tromsø all along. Now other politicians from other parties are also voicing opposition, even though memories of Norway's last Winter Olympics in Lillehammer are good.
The Socialist Left party (SV) has emerged as the next-most skeptical after the Progress Party, and newspaper VG reported Monday that opposition is growing within the Labour Party as well. Both SV and Labour form Norway's current government coalition, along with the Center Party (Sp).
Some Labour Party politicians reportedly worry there's a growing fear that every budget cut or closed-down school will be blamed on the Olympics, and they'll have an increasingly hard time justifying such massive investment in sports facilities in the far north.
Only the Center Party, a champion of economic development in outlying areas, has formally supported an Olympics in Tromsø.
Public support for an Olympics in Tromsø has been lukewarm at best, and even athletic associations around the country have been skeptical. They fear the cost of an Olympics will shift financial resources away from their own needs, but agreed this week to contribute nearly NOK 650 million to the project.
The government minister in charge of sports, Trond Giske, passed the report over to athletics officials on Tuesday, saying it's now up to them whether they're willing to put up enough of their own funds to help finance an Olympics. Their price has risen, Giske noted, to at least NOK 800 million. Government officials will then decide whether the state will issue the huge guarantee.
