In addition to the International Olympic Committee, some fifty international sports entities have their headquarters in Switzerland, mostly in Lausanne. And the financial benefits they generate have increased significantly.
© Archives / 24 hours / Patrick Martin
Olympic House, new name for the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.
The figures published on Tuesday by the Canton of Vaud are cause for celebration: according to a study carried out by the International Academy of Sports Sciences and Techniques, the economic benefits generated by the fifty or so federations and other international sports entities represent 1.68 billion francs per year on average for the period from 2014 to 2019. This figure was 1.07 billion for the previous study (2008 to 2013), which represents an increase of 57%.
More than half of the total economic impact (0.87 billion) is concentrated in the canton of Vaud. And it is obviously the district of Lausanne which mainly benefits from this windfall, which alone hosts 40 organizations, including the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the European office of the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Court of Arbitration for Sport and large number of international sports federations, such as hockey, volleyball or equestrian sports. For the Lausanne region, the average annual impact is estimated at 0.55 billion francs (0.25 billion for the period 2008-2013).
More than 3300 employees
The study shows that, in 2019, more than 3,300 people worked for one or other of these international sports entities and that 1,840 of them lived in the canton of Vaud, including nearly 1,000 in the district of Lausanne. . The IOC and football, namely FIFA in Zurich and UEFA in Nyon (VD), are the main employers in this sector. The direct economic impact of these jobs as well as those resulting from the activity of sports organisations, namely salaries, social charges and taxes, generate a direct economic impact of nearly 381 million francs per year on average in Switzerland on the analyzed period. For the year 2019, this figure was 423 million, including nearly 57 million francs in income tax which ended up in the coffers of the canton of Vaud.
But the presence of these sports institutions also generates income related to visitor spending. This business tourism translates, for example, into an annual average of 44,600 overnight stays in Switzerland. The study estimates this share of economic benefits at 29 million, a figure which does not take into account the 220,000 annual admissions to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne.
Finally, these institutions have also invested in Switzerland, devoting 292 million francs to construction work between 2014 and 2019, projects mainly carried out by local and regional companies.