The Danish capital has been reviewing the expense of hosting the latest International Olympic Committee meeting and all signs point to benefits significantly outweighing costs, according to the Copenhagen Post.
The hosting of the IOC event has proven a golden opportunity for the Danish capital to showcase itself, with some DKK 5 million spent by the Copenhagen City Council on the two week Copenhagen Olympic Festival based at the Town Hall. The money was spent on a city-wide clean-up and traffic congestion prevention project. The National Olympic Committee has spent an additional DKK 24 million in hosting the event.
According to the head of Copenhagen’s environmental and technical affairs department, Klaus Bondam, it has all been worth it. “The costs need to be seen in light of the fact that a billion people were watching on TV, as well as all the other ways Copenhagen was marketed,” said Bondam.
Wonderful Copenhagen, the city’s tourism organisation, estimates that DKK 70 million was generated by the IOC event for local merchants.
Spokesperson for Wonderful Copenhagen Aneh Hadju agreed the cost for hosting was expensive, but said that it has been shared among partners. “We also have a lot of sponsors, so it’s nearly impossible to calculate how much this is going to wind up costing us,” Hadju said. Hadju also lauded the benefits of having over 1000 international press members in Copenhagen for nearly a fortnight.
Wonderful Copenhagen’s Sport Event Denmark office estimates that the advertising value of news reports published during the congress and exposure to journalists adds up to hundreds of millions of kroner.
Sports Event Denmark’s Lars Lundov had earlier remarked: “I expect Copenhagen to be mentioned more times during the IOC meeting than it will be during the UN climate summit in December”.
[…] Copenhagen weighs up cost of IOC event […]