The local organising committee for the 2030 Winter Olympic Games in the French Alps has made its first significant commercial hire as it aims to hit its near-€2bn ($2.3bn) budget.
Cyrille Groll, an experienced commercial executive in the French market, has been recruited as chief revenue officer of French Alps 2030.
He joins from Ligue 1 club Olympique Lyonnais, where for the last seven years he has been director of business and revenue. Before that, Groll spent five years as vice-president of global sponsorship sales at CAA Eleven, Uefa’s sales agency for national team competitions. In that role he worked on sales processes for Euro 2016 and Euro 2020, as well as Euro 2016 and 2018 Fifa World Cup qualifiers.
Groll began his career at IMG, where he worked for more than 12 years, rising to the position of head of the agency’s mass participation division in France.
At French Alps 2030 he will work closely with, and report into, chief executive Cyril Linette, who was hired in late April. Linette is one of the most experienced media executives in France, having been sports director of Canal Plus from 2008 to 2015 and then chief executive of L’Équipe for three years.
French Alps 2030 president is Edgar Grospiron, the former Olympic freestyle skier who was installed in February.
The 2030 host city contract was only finally countersigned by the International Olympic Committee in early April, some nine months after the French Alps was chosen to stage the Games, after government financial guarantees were secured.
Domestic sponsorship target
In the IOC Future Host Commission’s report for French Alps 2030, presented to the IOC executive board 12 months ago, the Winter Games organising budget is €1.98bn, which will be funded through a combination of private and public partnerships. The target for domestic sponsorship revenue (there will be three tiers of partners) is €563m, which would account for 28 per cent of that budget, with public partnerships contributing €462.3m.
Ticketing and hospitality is targeted to bring in €262.3m, with an additional €28.4m from licensing and merchandising. The IOC contribution (€431m) and revenues from the TOP programme (€208m) would collectively account for a third of the local organising committee budget.
The biggest expenditure for French Alps 2030 is the Sports, Games Services & Operations budget of €335m, which is composed mainly of transport, security, stakeholder services, sports accommodation and villages operations.
The technology spend is expected to be a touch lower at €330m, followed by venue infrastructure, which is budgeted at €319m.
Built within the budget is a contingency of €258.5m, including a provision for inflation of €99m.
The Paris 2024 Olympics organising committee will hold its final board meeting today (Tuesday), where a Games profit of €76m, on total revenues of €4.48bn, will be signed off. It represents a significant uplift on the €26.8m profit reported in December.
Paris 2024 domestic sponsors brought in €1.24bn in rights fees and value-in-kind contributions. The initial domestic sponsorship budget was €1.1bn but that was raised in 2022 when the overall budget increased.
More than 12 million tickets were sold across the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics, generated a total of €1.33bn in ticketing revenue, a number that swelled to €1.49bn when factoring in hospitality income including payments from On Location, the Endeavor-owned hospitality provider.