Paris secures 8m euros in sponsorship deals for Olympic bid

PARIS— Leaders of the Paris bid for the 2024 Olympics secured about 8 million euros ($8.9 million) in sponsorship deals with four major French groups on Tuesday.

The bid committee said each of the four new partners — Caisse des Depots, Elior Group, JCDecaux and RATP — will contribute about 2 million euros ($2.2 million) to the budget.

The announcement, coming on the same day Paris will release its bid logo, follows the signing last month of the bid’s first sponsorship deal with France’s national lottery, Francaise des Jeux, which has also promised 2 million euros in funding for the bid.

“We now look forward to working with our partners to spread the special message of Olympism across our city and nation so the public can really take part and engage with our campaign to become the Olympic host city in 2024,” Paris bid chief executive Etienne Thobois said

The cost of the bid campaign has been estimated at about 60 million euros ($65 million), with half of the budget to be raised through private funding. If Paris is awarded the Olympics, the infrastructure budget for hosting the games is expected to reach 3 billion euros ($4.5 billion), with operational costs of 3.2 billion euros ($4.8 billion).

Bid co-president Bernard Lapasset told RTL radio that the public half of the funding has already been received through subsidies from the state, the Paris region and the city itself. He also promised there will be no tax increases to finance the project.

Paris, which hosted the Olympics in 1900 and 1924, is competing against Budapest, Rome and Los Angeles for the games. The International Olympic Committee will choose the host city in September 2017.

Lapasset said bid officials are currently negotiating four more important sponsorship deals with companies he did not name. A total of about 15 big corporations are expected to sponsor the bid.

Despite the failure of a crowd funding campaign that so far raised 630,820 euros ($680,000) instead of the 10 million euros ($11 million) expected by the French Olympic committee, Lapasset said he remains confident the Paris bid is on the right track.

“It’s going to start all over again,” he said, insisting that a lack of communication hindered the funding plan. “We are about to submit our first dossier to the IOC. We are ready to present our vision and the content of our bid to the IOC, and I’m convinced things will change.”

As Paris looks to boost its public campaign, the bid logo was to be revealed later Tuesday evening at a ceremony on the Champs-Elysees. The logo, developed by Parisian design agency Dragon Rouge, will be projected on the Arc de Triomphe and shown at the same time on the Marseille town hall facade. The Mediterranean port city will host sailing events and football matches if the Paris bid wins.