(Bloomberg) -- The mayor of the Hungarian capital Budapest said he backed a bid by the city to secure the 2036 Summer Olympic Games.
Gergely Karacsony commented late Saturday on RTL Television in response to Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s interview in with sports daily Nemzeti Sport earlier in the day.
Orban said his cabinet would be ready to organize the events should Budapest be awarded the event, but that it would be impossible without the cooperation of the city.
Karacsony would support the Olympic bid, he said, but only on condition of regaining financial support from Orban’s government, which has suspended the lion’s share of its funding to the city in recent years, putting the opposition-led capital under a financial squeeze.
Hosting the Olympics is a long-held dream of Orban, who’s spent lavishly on building sports stadiums and has hosted major sports events in recent years such as the world athletics and world swimming competitions.
“Obviously, if the municipality of Budapest doesn’t support the Budapest Olympics, there will be no Olympics,” Orban said in Saturday’s interview. “If the Olympic Committee decides to bid for the Olympics, and if it’s backed by Budapest, then there is no doubt that the government will support it one thousand percent.”
A previous attempt to bid for the Olympics was scuppered by an opposition referendum campaign started in 2017, and resulted in the cabinet’s aborting plans to bid for organizing the sports event.
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