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Olympics earnings hit $146m

By Lei Lei (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-20 14:20

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games raked in a profit of more than 1 billion yuan ($146 million), the National Audit Office (NAO) said on Friday.

A report posted on the office's website said the total operating cost of the Games was 19.343 billion yuan and the operating revenue, 20.5 billion yuan.

Apart from the operating cost, China also spent 19.49 billion yuan on building 102 Olympic projects in Beijing and the five other cities that co-hosted the Games. Thirty-six of them were competition venues and the rest were used for training.

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The operating revenue came mainly from broadcasting rights and marketing programs. The expenses included 5.092 billion yuan on broadcasting, accommodation, transport and medical services; 1.272 billion yuan on the opening and closing ceremonies, torch relay and other promotional activities; and 1.424 billion yuan on human resources.

The Olympic and Paralympic opening and closing ceremonies together cost 831 million yuan. And the revenue of the Paralympic Games was equal to its cost: 863 million yuan.

The earnings from the Games will be used to set up special funds for development of sport, improve sport facilities and organize events for common people, an official said. "The scheme to set up the funds is under discussion."

The Beijing Olympic Games organizing committee (or BOCOG) was the first organizing body to be in charge of hosting the Olympics and Paralympics both.

"According to fixed exchange rates, the cost of the Beijing Games was slightly lower than that of the 2004 Athens Olympics, and as we know the budget for the next Games is more than that for Beijing. So the Beijing Olympics was not the most expensive," chinanews.com.cn quoted an NAO official as having said.

The Athens Games cost $2.4 billion and reportedly made a profit of $155 million.

The NAO began auditing BOCOG's accounts in the later half of 2005.

Its report said: "BOCOG controlled the expenditure, and its revenue was much more than the originally estimated 410 million yuan."

"BOCOG has maintained strict supervision," it said. And though "no major irregularities were detected during auditing", some problems did crop up. For example, there was "no detailed plan for some of the projects and some of the budgets were too high".

BOCOG, however, paid due attention to those problems and rectified its programs in time, the report said.