Vancouver Olympics generated $2.5 billion

 

Games themselves broke even

 
 
 

T he Vancouver 2010 Winter Games not only brought home a heavy medal haul for Canada, it turned out to be a rousing financial success for Canada and British Columbia, according to two new government-sponsored studies.

The studies, released Friday, indicate the Olympic and Paralympic Games generated as much as $2.5 billion in gross domestic product in B.C. alone.

The reports were produced by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

They were released just hours before the Vancouver Organizing Committee unveiled its final financial report, which declared more financial good news, saying the Games broke even.

VANOC said in a news release that $1.884 billion in operations resulted in neither surplus nor deficit, and that the $603-million venue development program also came in on budget.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers studies, meanwhile, one covering the period 2003-2009 -- the lead-up to the Games -- and the other covering the first three months of 2010, concluded that more than 45,500 jobs were created and the value of incremental tourism rose by $463 million.

It said venue construction by both VANOC and third-party investors is estimated to have generated $1.22 billion worth of activity.

"It is clear in these reports that hosting the 2010 Winter Games has created lasting legacies that will benefit Canadians for years to come," Gary Lunn, the federal minister of state for sport, said in a statement.

B.C. Finance Minister Colin Hansen said the early results are promising, but the full impact may turn out to be greater once a review of all of 2010 is done.

"We've always believed that the Games would provide the catalyst for economic, social, and athletic development provincially and nationally," he said.

"These preliminary results are significant, and we know that when we measure 2010 fully, we'll see that British Columbia got an even more powerful economic lift from the Games, just when we needed it most."

The two reports are part of a joint effort by the federal and B.C. governments to study the impact of hosting the Vancouver Games.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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