CALGARY — The Winter X Games will no longer be coming to Calgary.
The city had secured the rights to host the renowned extreme sports competition and festival for three years, starting in 2020, but with $13.5 million in provincial funding committed by the previous NDP government cut in the recently released UCP budget, those plans were put in jeopardy.
Tourism Calgary said plans were being pushed back a year, to 2021, so they could work on securing financing, but Mayor Naheed Nenshi announced Thursday it will now be scrapped.
“We heard from the minister today that this should be done entirely through private sponsorship, and certainly, there was an enormous amount of private sponsorship in the budget and business plan there, but it did require that bit of government funding both from the city and province to be able to get over the hump on this and I just don’t see that being replaced,” said Nenshi.
“So as of today, unfortunately, that project will not move forward in Calgary.”
Tourism Calgary had earlier said it had been working to bring the Winter X Games to Calgary for almost a decade and expected the event could bring in about 75,000 spectators and $75 million annually over its three-year run.
