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.

As we reported last April:

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.

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