Rio 2016 Continues Budget Cuts Discussions with Federations

(ATR) Rodrigo Garcia tells Around the Rings 75 percent of international federations have been told about changes made to venues from Olympic budget restructuring with no pushback.

Garcia, Rio 2016 Sports Director, said that the full extent of services affected by restructuring is still being discussed, and international federations have been "very collaborative" when discussing possible last-minute venue changes.

Both the IOC and International Paralympic Committee were consulted when making budget decisions but Garcia said that international federations and National Olympic Committees had been in continuous communication with Rio 2016, and were notified after decisions had been taken.

The biggest change to an Olympic venue came on Jan. 19 when Rio 2016 said that plans for a 4,000 seat temporary grandstand set to be built on the Lagoa de Freitas were scrapped. The organizing committee hopes to finish discussing all budget restructuring matters, including plans for other temporary grandstands, with international federations in the coming days.

"We are not smashing down anything we are trying to optimize our operation," Garcia said to ATR. "We are proposing a number of adjustments on grandstands that are more related to the final design of the venues, specifically with temporary grandstands."

Garcia added that as Olympic contractors finish constructing the temporary seating facilities the number of finished seats, "can go up or down 10-15 percent depending on the shape of the grandstand." A full list of venues that will undergo changes has been finalized, but not available at the time of publication.

Even with lagging ticket sales, Rio 2016 confirmed that all there have not been any sales made for venues that are seeing their capacity reduced. Garcia said that there will only be tickets added to the market in the case of a venue being enlarged ensuring that consumers haven’t bought tickets for seats that have been eliminated.

"When we reduce venue capacities we took into consideration not only ticket sales, but all the sport operations, the operations of the venue, the impact on the international federation, and the showcase of the sport during the Olympic and Paralympic Games," Garcia added.

As the economic situation in Brazil continues to flounder, Games officials believe that even with all budget cuts the show put on in August will speak for itself.

"The entire world is trying to optimize costs and budgets and bring the Olympic Games to the right scale," Garcia said. "We can still deliver, and we are aiming to deliver a spectacular Games in Rio with this optimization."

Written by Aaron Bauer in Rio de Janeiro.

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