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PARIS: Leaders of the Paris bid for the 2024 Olympics secured a 2 million euros ($2.2 million) sponsorship deal Thursday with the operator of France’s national lottery.
Francaise des Jeux became the first company to support the bid, which is competing with Budapest, Rome and Los Angeles for the games. The International Olympic Committee will choose the host city in September 2017.
Paris bid co-president Bernard Lapasset said the agreement with the lottery operator is the first of a series of deals to be announced in the coming months.
“We are very proud today to take part to this extraordinary campaign which is about to start thanks to the support of the first Paris 2024 sponsor,” Lapasset said at a news conference. “That gives us appetite and desire.”
The cost of the bid has been estimated at about 60 million euros ($65 million), with the major part 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).
Paris last hosted the Olympics in 1924.
FDJ CEO Stephane Pallez said a lottery scratch card game promoting the bid will be launched in 2017 by and could help fund the candidacy.
“If it works well, we will donate part of the game’s income to the bid,” she said. “It’s not included in the 2 million and could help us make more than 2 million.”
To help finance the Paris bid, the French national Olympic committee also devised a crowd funding scheme dubbed “Je reve des Jeux” (I dream of the games) that has so far produced limited results, raising 630,314 euros ($680,000) since its launch last September.
Lapasset said the French committee is looking at ways of improving the promotion campaign that includes the sale of 2 euro ($2.25) wristbands, but insisted the bid is not relying on the money raised from that effort.
“This is not an element that has been included in the budget,” Lapasset said. “It’s just a little extra.”