The Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games briefed a Utah legislative committee on Tuesday, laying out board structure, venue plans, fundraising progress and early timelines for volunteer recruitment and ticketing.

The update focused on governance, revenue and community engagement: the committee has formed a 25-member board that mixes host (state) representatives with sport-movement representatives; most venues from the 2002 Winter Games will be reused; donor commitments are approaching $150 million; and organizers said they do not plan to use local or state taxpayer dollars to fund games operations.

Fraser Bullock, executive chair and president of the organizing committee, said the board includes 25 members with “13 … host representatives, and the host is the state of Utah,” and that the board includes athlete representation and standing committees for ethics, finance, audit, impact and legacy. Brad Wilson, the organizing committee’s vice chair and CEO, said the committee has carried forward the budget approved during the bid and is operating from that budget while it secures revenue sources.

Wilson said the committee is relying on philanthropic donors now and will enter the corporate-sponsorship market after the 2028 Los Angeles Games conclude. “We are reliant on the good graces of the philanthropic community here in the state of Utah,” he said, and organizers expect to announce a first wave of donors soon. He added that donor commitments are “approaching a $150,000,000.”

Darren Hughes, vice president of operations and planning, described a high-level schedule that aligns with the Olympic movement’s planning windows: a transition phase through about 2027, expanded international engagement after the 2028 Los Angeles Games, a detailed four-year planning period beginning around 2030, and readiness and staffing growth in 2032–33 leading into operational activities for 2034. Hughes said the committee is developing a venue master plan that keeps a single athletes’ village and is reusing many of the same venues used in 2002, and that sport-program details will be negotiated with the IOC, IPC and international federations.

On hotels and logistics, Wilson said agreements covering about 21,000 hotel rooms are already in place and the committee needs roughly 3,000 more rooms to reach its target; he said he expects that gap to be filled in the coming months. He also said the organizing committee has hired a small permanent staff (about seven employees so far) and uses contractors for additional work.

Legislators pressed organizers on volunteer recruitment, ticket affordability and transparency about funding. In response, organizers said they intend to open a volunteer pre-registration portal before year-end and signaled a larger volunteer program than 2002: organizers discussed the 2002 volunteer program as having many applicants and tens of thousands of volunteers and said they expect to recruit substantially more volunteers for 2034. On ticketing, organizers described a “barbell” pricing strategy combining a large pool of low-cost tickets for broad public access with higher-priced premium hospitality packages to help fund operations; they said 34,000 low-cost tickets at about $34 each are committed for some events where capacity is greatest.

On public funding, Brad Wilson said the budget is public and “there is no anticipation of any spending of local or state taxpayer funds,” adding: “a cornerstone of the Utah bid and the games is we will not use taxpayer dollars to fund the operations of the 2034 games. And, we’re committed to that, and that won’t change.” The committee also said it will report budget updates to its finance-and-audit committee and to the public as it spends against the approved budget.

Organizers described outreach plans, including a listening tour in venue communities (Kearns was cited as the next stop) and partnerships with youth-sport organizations, the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation and disability-sport providers such as the National Ability Center and Wasatch Adaptive Sports. Ashley Matthews, a member of the legislative committee representing the area around the Utah Olympic Oval, pressed organizers to ensure programs reach families near existing venues who face equipment or cost barriers.

Legislators also asked about leveraging federal funding for infrastructure and transit; organizers said they will collaborate with state leaders and the federal delegation to identify opportunities and that some local governments (for example Weber County and Ogden City) are already developing community-level strategies.

Votes at the meeting were limited to approval of prior minutes. Representative Ashley Matthews moved to approve the minutes of the committee’s June 11, 2024 meeting; the motion was approved by voice vote and recorded as approved (specific roll-call tallies were not provided in the transcript). The committee then adjourned.

Organizers emphasized the long preparatory runway—about a decade before the 2034 opening ceremonies—and described the work ahead as a mix of governance formation, fundraising, community listening and phased planning leading to a larger staffing and operations effort in the final two years before the Games.

For legislators, the briefing served as both an update and an opportunity to press for ongoing transparency about funding, broad community access to tickets and programs for youth and disadvantaged families, and coordination with state and federal partners on legacy infrastructure.