Fundraising flop for Olympic bid

THE committee organising France’s bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games has raised just €629,000 of the €10m it needs to collect in donations, according to a news station.

RTL said that the Comité olympique français (COF) had only raised a fraction of the money it needed since the campaign was launched on September 25.

In total the bid will cost €60m, half of which will come from the government and half from the organisers who have set a target of at least €10m in donations.

Sports Minister Patrick Kanner told the radio station that it was “a serious problem” that he would be investigating in the new year.

The campaign was launched with sports celebrities Teddy Riner and Tony Parker and covered by public television and was due to finish on New Year’s Eve.

The COF has been selling bracelets branded “I dream of the games” for €2 and offering donors the chance to appear on a virtual wall on the jerevedesjeux.com site however few people have taken up the offer.

An auction of sporting objects was also a flop with the vest of basketball player Nicolas Batum going for €21 and the t-shirt of archer Bérengère Schuh fetching the same.