Nice Mayor’s Shakedown Costs IRONMAN 2.25 Million Euros
Nice’s new mayor, Éric Ciotti, ran his campaign, according to Politico’s European site, as “a fiscal hawk,” and it didn’t take him long to make his mark on that front now that he’s taken charge of things in France’s fifth-largest city. As we reported yesterday, Ciotti held a press conference where he outlined over 50 million euros of cuts he planned to make to the city’s budget, including cancelling the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship and the Ultra Trail Métropole Nice Côte d’Azur put on by UTMB.
“We do not want to spend more than a million euros (the actual number is 1.6 million) for an event that paralyzes the Promenade des Anglais, mobilizes hundreds of agents and law enforcement,” Ciotti said at yesterday’s presser, according to ice.fr.
Ciotti announced at today’s city council meeting that the world championship will still be taking place. What prompted the turnaround?
According to the mayor’s office, IRONMAN reached out yesterday and offered to organize the event “without resorting to the participation of the city of Nice,” ice.fr reports. This morning UTMB reached out and also agreed to “bear the costs of the organization,” which will save the city 650,000 euros.
IRONMAN doesn’t have any other comments to make on the situation at this point, so we don’t know any more details on the race. Did that 1.6 million euros include policing costs? Will the city be picking up any expenses? We don’t know, but at the end of the day, IRONMAN is either losing a bunch of money, or will now have to pay for services the city previously provided for free.
Presumably there was a contract in place, but as with the Kona issue a few years ago when the mayor found himself forced to backtrack on a five-year contract to host two days of racing on the Big Island, it makes no sense for IRONMAN to take the city to court. It’s hard enough to organize events of this magnitude in a place that’s welcoming you – can you imagine how much fun it would be to try and do it with an unhappy host venue?
Future Nice Events
IRONMAN awarded Nice the 70.3 worlds this year in lieu of another few years of split championships. Nice was a somewhat logical spot to go when it was decided to split the men’s and women’s world championship races (this, of course, after the first of the two-day event in Kona which led to huge disruptions on the Big Island which led to the mayor pulling out of the aforementioned deal). Nice has long been known as the “birthplace of long-distance triathlon in Europe” thanks to the Nice International Triathlon that started in 1982, and with IRONMAN having hosted events in the city for over 20 years – the first IRONMAN France event took place in 2005.
While Nice will no longer be hosting the IRONMAN World Championship after the men compete there in September, today’s announcement includes the news that the city will be hosting the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in 2026 and 2028, with a “mutual option to host the event in 2030.”
Without that 1.6 million euros, my guess is that IRONMAN will be looking for an alternate site for 2028, and I can’t imagine there’s any chance of the 2030 worlds heading to Nice. It’s interesting that the IRONMMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 Nice event in June was never part of the conversation, so one assumes that event doesn’t come with the big fee to the city, and presumably will continue on.
Whether or not the events from the last few days will affect IRONMAN’s ability to attract cities to host the 70.3 worlds in the future will be interesting to watch. Is Oman, the host of the 2029 worlds, paying more than 1.6 million euros for the event? (That’s probably a complicated question since the event is part of a larger package that includes more races and its sponsorship of the IRONMAN Pro Series.) Are other potential venues going to balk at those fees? One would hope not – certainly an event that draws roughly 6,000 athletes and their families provides a financial boost to a city and region that makes that fee more than reasonable. (The folks in Taupo, New Zealand were thrilled to host the race in 2024, and it seemed to me that the community in Marbella were more than happy last year, too.)
Ramifications for Nice
Ciotti, following on his “fiscal hawk” approach, announced yesterday that he was making dramatic cuts to many parts of the Nice government, including cutting salaries, reducing perks like lavish parties, cars and security, along with other changes to the city’s budget. (The International Metropole Nice Côte d’Azur pétanque event has already announced that it will be cancelled.) All this will fund tax cuts, which is no-doubt a popular message. But what of the long-term effects of this strategy? Will major events choose to pass on Nice because the city won’t help them financially?
For the next few years there’s probably not a lot of downside for the city. The Olympics are coming in 2030 (as noted yesterday, Ciotti is wreaking havoc with those plans, too), and Nice offers an incredible combination of beautiful water, spectacular mountainous terrain, an international airport, vast accommodation opportunities and a welcoming tourism industry.
Unfortunately, the ramifications are more likely worse for IRONMAN and other endurance events that look to close roads and require cooperation from a host city – cooperation that includes everything from policing to tourism funding.
Éric Ciotti just blew all that out of the water, forcing IRONMAN’s hand by simply saying the city wasn’t paying. With the race less than five months away, IRONMAN had no choice but to give in.
When I first started working in this industry, in the early 90s, IRONMAN events succeeded in small towns that offered lots of accommodation options. There’s a reason Penticton worked. Why Taupo and Lake Placid still work. An IRONMAN race in those communities brings so much to the table that there was a win/ win on both sides. Race directors keep telling me it’s getting harder and harder to find those kind of communities. Over the last couple of days we’ve learned that its getting hard even for seemingly huge events like an IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship, too.
I always thought the high entry fees of Ironman events were due to the cost of things like road closures and emergency services etc etc. If Nice was funding that, then why the high entry fee?
Looks like Ironman has to figure out how to get the 70.3 Worlds done in Nice without $1.6M. If we consider Nice a supplier who just raised their price (effectively), the seller of the product (ironman) for whom the supplier’s price is a cost, still needs to figure out how to manage their margin because they have a commitment to their customers regardless of supply chain cost changing!!!
In any case, hopefully all parties can resolve this.
The price that a town pays Ironman versus how much money each of us brings in, roughly 6000 athletes x $3000 of accommodations + $1000 on restaurants + $1000 on incidentals, and we’re $6000 x $5000. Feeling like $30M - $50M comes into the town and the mayor is fighting about losing 1/20th or so of what we will spend there. And that 6000 person number is low given familiies and volunteers, so it’s probably closer to $75M
What LOL
Sorry Dev, I don’t know why you would inflate these numbers like that, and compare revenue of businesses to municipal tax receipts, in addition to treating revenue we bring in as 100% additive to what the area is grossing already.
While the numerical answer probably is complicated, the political answer probably is not.
I think Gulf countries not being democracies is a large part of why they’ve been able to go on a triathlon event hosting offensive these days.
I’ve seen some of the Ironman contracts. They get X amount of money from the city, usually through tourism travel council’s that are essentially funded through taxes mostly borne by tourists and out of towners. And then Ironman pays most if not all of that back to various agencies that support the event.
But there’s so many costs involved in stretching out a race across a large distance. And the reality is, Ironman could often get that exact same tourism grant if they were spinning loops in the parking lot or on private land and keep it. So it is really money they are paying. It’s like saying Ironman isn’t paying for anything in reality their customers are (athletes, sponsors, and cities). Duh, right?
Now some of these municipalities are actually smart and realize their police have budgets that aren’t all met. And it’s not actually legal to just appropriate some taxes and pay for other services from them. So it’s a pretty smart deal for the city to take a million bucks in tourism taxes they otherwise have to pay for directly related tourism projects and funnel it back into their top heavy police and fire departments. It’s not like they just fire all their staff that weekend if Ironman isn’t paying for them.
The mayor is just engaging in old fashioned ignorant politics. Or he really is ignorant. Presumptuous reformers and budget cutters often learn they can’t do what they’d like and the stupid seeming stuff government does is often the result of some logic that’s forced into place because of a system that can’t really be changed.
It’s trump politics in small.
Seems like a good move to me. Nice already has 2 Ironman events, and is the biggest tourism spot in France outside of Paris. Not sure they needed IM Worlds to fill hotels in September
Anyway, if IronMan and UTMB (which is owned by Ironman, right) agree so easily to the deal, this makes me think the original deal was pretty sweet for them, and they’ll still come out of this way on top. Wouldn’t even suprise me if they still came to Nice in 2028 with that new deal.
Seeing how much they charge for their events, I for one am not gonna cry for poor Ironma losing 2.25 millions, and hoping other cities follow the lead.
I would say ironman thinks how many clients they would lose by changing the venue.
And prefers to swallow the cost.
They won’t come back for worlds in Nice.
Not sure if my numbers are inflated or in the range, but regardless one always has to look at top line revenue generation for a town for anything (sports event, rock concert, trade show etc) and versus the price the town may be paying for the event to be held in said town and then go from there.
The line items to work with are
incremental number of hotel/airbnb room nites
number of meals in restaurants
number of local taxi/uber fares
other local buying/spending
For Ironman Canada Ottawa , Ottawa board of tourism announced it was something like $8M and half the athletes were literally local and the others traveling in were from US, It was not 6000 athletes coming from across the world, so build from there to get a sense of lost top line for Nice. You can choose to argue and just tell someone they are wrong, or you can be constructive and say, “here are more precise numbers, for the following reasons”. So just table what you think they are based off what I am missing or your original thought.
Like @kajet I suggest these are extraordinary/bonkers figures (having spent the week there en famille for IMWC 2024) and paid most of the bills. No, I’m not going to waste time estimating a better set of figures (I haven’t data, similar to your good self).
Agree with your sentiment though: the amount coming into the city dwarfs any payment from the city in euros or in kind.
Let’s hope the commune’s governance and checks and balances work rather more effectively than we’ve seen in other hitherto reputable nations.
Why are Devs numbers bonkers? I think he’s being cheap!. 5 night hotel at $600 night = his $3000 estimate. $200 a day on food & incidentals = $1000 estimate per each.
i just checked my Marriott app. Price range is $400-$1000 per night depending on which one in Nice.
WC 2025 we had some wonderful dinners during our week there easily blowing through Devs daily budget per dinner. Other days obviously were cheap cooking in an Airbnb but heck a latte is $10. Thats $40 a day right there for my wife and I.
Day trip travel to Cannes or Menton for those wanting to see things easily blows through his budget.
Disclaimer: Canadian funds
Also our European friends are forgetting how much international travellers will spend when we go to Nice/area. Generally we’re going for a slightly longer time and spending more than the numbers I used, which probably events out the local “drive to” European athletes.
In any case, 1.6M Euros out vs XYZ million Euros in, is the calculation vs inconvenience for locals on two days . It is not like Nice is new to hosting major triathlon events. It’s been going on since 1986.
I am spending a bit north of $3000 CAD on AirBnBs, so the rest is what I spend locally. In my case, it will only be 1x meals per day in restaurants and I will likely buy a single water bottle at expo and spend nothing else other than in grocery stores
In general Euro tourism is grinding some locals gears whether it is Ironman or joe blow American or Chinese tourists.
To a point I get it but if you don’t want the cash then you won’t get it. Then the nimby Karen types have to figure out what else to cut because you lose more.
It’s all fun and games cutting stuff until nobody wants to live places because it sucks.
Holy crap I didn’t realise triathletes were so loaded where 6000 athletes will spend on average 5000 dollars on a weekly ironman vacation, and that’s not counting travel and cost of race. You guys are nuts !
Also, even if 30 to 50 million dollars are spent, how much of that actually benefits people from Nice ?
First of all, if you spend 10 dollars, how much profit on average is the guy taking your 10 dollars making ? Because you’re not giving him 10, you’re spending it, so you’re getting something in return. Depends on your business obviously, but I guess his profit would be 1 to 2 dollars ? Then if you’re staying in Mariotts, how much of that 3000 dollars is actually going to the people of Nice ? A big chunk is probably taken by the head company not in Nice. Then if you’re staying a week, you’re probably visiting the nearby towns and spending your money there (heck you might even not be staying in Nice). And finally as said Nice is a tourist hot spot, so if there are 6000 athletes filling up the hotels, how many others are not coming ? And how many locals and tourists will not shop on the Promenade because they just can’t get there the day of the race or are scared away by all the signs “beware of road closures” they will put up ? Or just no bother to come if they hear Ironman will be there.
It’s not uncommon for shop and restaurant owners to gripe at sporting events because they actually have less people coming in. I’ve heard about it for Embrunman and at Pau when the Tour comes and all the roads are blocked.
All in all, Ironman and event companies may say they bring millions of dollars to the city, but how much of that actually goes to the citizens of the city ? I’d bet a lot less.
For me, the real value of having such an event is publicity for your city to try to get it on the map and get more people to come visit or live there. How much is it worth ? I have no idea, and depends a lot on the city. And should city pay a million or so dollars for the right to host such an event ? That’s for them to decide. I sure wouldn’t want to if I lived in Nice. Pontevedra I might understand if they are trying to become a sporting vacation hot spot.
Profit for Ironman.