As officials at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum in downtown Colorado Springs prepare for the gleaming facility’s fifth anniversary on Wednesday, they grapple with attendance figures that haven’t nearly measured up to original projections and revenues that have fallen year-over-year.

Officials said they’re working to right the ship with a “bold investment” this year to spend hundreds of thousands of additional advertising dollars under a “renewed commitment” to promote the distinctive attraction and drive it to its “rightful place upon a national stage.”

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The museum was thwarted upon opening by something no one could have foreseen: the COVID-19 pandemic, which throttled tourism nationally and worldwide. But it has also become clear, officials acknowledge, that the forecast by proponents and consultants of 1,000 visitors per day was grandly optimistic.

Even the much longer established and more widely known sports museums in Cooperstown, N.Y., and Canton, Ohio, are not pulling that number. 

“We have this amazing asset, and we know we’re telling amazing stories for Team USA,” the museum’s Chief Executive Officer Marisa Wigglesworth said. “We know too many people in our region and beyond don’t know we’re here. To do right by this community — to do right by Olympic City, USA — we’re making sure we’re shouting it from the rooftops.”

The $96 million museum at Sierra Madre Street and Vermijo Avenue, the first and only museum of its kind in the United States, was built as a tribute to the country’s Olympic and Paralympic movements.

It helped cement Colorado Springs’ ties to the Olympics, supporters have said. The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and an Olympic Training Center also call the city home.

The 60,000-square-foot museum includes 12 galleries across three floors, showcasing artifacts including a complete collection of Olympic torches and medals, interactive games, displays on the Summer and Winter Olympics, a Hall of Fame for Olympic and Paralympic athletes and more.

Visitation falls short of expectations

Since it opened on July 30, 2020, the museum has welcomed only a fraction each year of the 350,000 annual visitors that supporters like Dick Celeste, a former two-term Ohio governor, past Colorado College president and a member of the museum board, originally forecast the facility would attract.

A feasibility study conducted for the museum during early planning stages looked at visitation at a variety of local indoor and outdoor tourist attractions to arrive at the museum’s projected visitation levels, Celeste said by phone Friday, which may have been misguided. The museum is primarily an indoor facility. 

The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, established in 1939, welcomed 275,000 visitors pre-pandemic in 2019, digital sports business outlet Sportico reported in late November.

By comparison, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, established in 1983 and located in Cleveland, saw nearly 563,000 visitors in 2019, the digital news outlet Cleveland.com reported in May 2022.

During what Wigglesworth called a “banner year for tourism,” the Olympic museum saw its highest visitation in 2021, when 106,767 people attended, data from the facility shows.

Officials have adjusted attendance counts since opening to include only true museum visitors and not people who only come to the museum for private events hosted onsite.

Colorado Springs also celebrated its sesquicentennial in 2021, which helped boost museum attendance that year, Wigglesworth added.

Visitation dropped by 28% in 2022 to 77,205 people, and in 2023 it dropped again, by nearly 10% from the previous year, to 69,929.

Attendance at the National Baseball Hall of Fame plummeted to 51,271 in the pandemic year of 2020, but pushed back to 236,406 in 2023, according to Sportico. 

The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, founded in 1963, welcomed about 208,000 visitors in 2023, according to reporting from Crain’s Cleveland Business in March 2024. The Pro Football Hall of Fame did not return The Gazette’s request for more information on its annual visitation, among other data. 

Pandemic attendance at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame dropped 80% to 112,600 visitors in 2020, according to Cleveland.com. That number rebounded to 514,000 in 2024, according to Rock & Roll Hall’s annual report.

Events boost museum attendance

Olympics and Paralympics games in 2021 and 2022, along with a festival the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum hosted in 2022, helped drive attendance to the Colorado Springs attraction during those years, Wigglesworth said. Without those events in 2023, visitation fell further that year, she added.

Museum attendance rose nearly 20% in 2024, the year Paris hosted the Summer Games, up to 83,582.

Nearly 43,000 people have visited the museum so far in 2025, according to data as of July 13.

“Five years in, we’re learning a lot,” Wigglesworth said. “What is clear to us is that 350,000 visitors a year was not an accurate projection for this museum, in this community, in this tourism destination. We are in the process of re-establishing what is going to be our attendance model.”

In this effort, museum staff are working to better understand how Olympic Games and festivals affect attendance levels.

“We are still learning as we go, and we have some really big, momentous events to look forward to,” Wigglesworth said.

Declining revenues

The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum’s revenues have also fallen year-over-year since its first full year of operation in 2021, data shows.

Revenues totaled nearly $15 million in 2021, thanks to a large in-kind donation and federal grants the museum didn’t receive again in 2022, officials said. They’ve fallen steadily to about $10.8 million in 2022, about $7.3 million in 2023 and about $6.4 million in 2024, data from tax returns and the museum show.

Through the first six months of 2025, revenues totaled around $3.2 million.

In 2023, the museum operated at a loss of about $1.3 million. Its expenses in 2024 totaled about $6 million, not including nearly $3 million in depreciation. Expenses for 2025 are about $2.9 million, as of June 30.

“Our relatively short history means we are in this circumstance where we have not had years that look like one another really strongly, so that we can really build and reflect on what our true operations are,” Wigglesworth said. “We now have the opportunity to look at this data and continue to grow and build.”

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While adults are visiting museums slightly more often than they were pre-pandemic, half of all museums in the country still have not returned to pre-pandemic attendance levels, according to a September 2024 survey of American museum visitors from Washington, D.C.-based American Alliance of Museums and Wilkening Consulting.

As more museums across the country recover, “we see that this is our moment to establish ourselves and burst onto the scene as a museum that has a rightful place on the national stage, celebrating our Olympic athletes,” Wigglesworth said. “… We want to be a quality-of-life asset for people who call Colorado Springs home, in addition to folks who come to our community as tourists.”

City for Champions

The museum was the first of five new sports and entertainment venues completed as part of Colorado Springs’ City for Champions initiative, proposed in 2013 to boost local and state tourism.

The other projects are the Hybl Sports Medicine and Performance Center, which opened in August 2020 at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs; Weidner Field, a multipurpose stadium located downtown, which opened April 2021; the Ed Robson Arena at Colorado College that opened in September 2021; and a new Air Force Academy visitors center, named in honor of former Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Bradley Hosmer, planned to open at the end of this year.

In 2013, the Colorado Economic Development Commission approved as much as $120.5 million in state sales tax revenues over 30 years to partially bankroll the City for Champions projects. The financing mechanism allows the city to use increased sales tax revenues generated by development to fund each City for Champions project.

The museum was allocated $26.2 million of the state funds. It raised its remaining costs through private donations and proceeds from a Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority bond issue.

The museum was projected to generate approximately $28.3 million in new sales tax revenues over 30 years.

As of June 30, the city has received about $61 million in tax increment distributions since it began receiving them in 2014, 52% of which the city is allowed to earmark to pay back bonds that helped finance the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum, according to data provided by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

The museum and Weidner Field are helping foster private development in the surrounding area, said Jariah Walker, executive director of the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority, including plans for the 27-story OneVela apartment tower at the northeast corner of Sahwatch and West Costilla streets.

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Seattle-based Weidner Apartment Homes opened its first apartments in September at its Experience at Epicenter complex adjacent to Weidner Field, also in southwest downtown. They hope to break ground by early 2026 on the more than 400-unit second phase of the development, officials said earlier this year.

The Urban Renewal Authority is the financing entity for the $120.5 million in Regional Tourism Act dollars pledged to Colorado Springs by the state.

Former Councilman Bill Murray, who served on the dais for two terms from 2015 to 2023, said he was skeptical of initial attendance and revenue projections consultants provided the city when it was considering how to finance the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum.

Many people visit Colorado Springs for popular outdoor attractions like Garden of the Gods or Pikes Peak, rather than indoor attractions, he said.

Five years later, Murray does not believe the city should have invested in the museum.

“Promises made were promises not kept,” he said.

He also worried the museum wouldn’t attract many repeat visitors during years when there are no Olympic events. Summer and Winter Games are held every four years on a staggered two-year basis.

“There is a challenge on attendance,” Celeste said. “Visitors to Colorado Springs really like outdoor events more than indoor events, so it’s a challenge to tell them the story of how engaging the museum is. But I think the biggest success of the museum has been the response of Olympic and Paralympic athletes when they visit, and recognizing that there’s a place where their story will be told … in a way that isn’t happening any place else. … I’m confident that over the next five years we’ll see a substantial increase in attendance and the kinds of outreach the museum is doing.”

Looking to the future

Since about 2023, the museum has focused on attracting repeat visitors from Colorado Springs and the rest of the state, and boosting the number of events it hosts as well as its branding, programming and group sales, Wigglesworth said.

In 2021, the museum held 139 events; last year, it hosted 174, according to data from the museum. Between Jan. 1 and July 13, the facility hosted 106 events, with 181 total events expected this year.

The museum sold 9,160 tickets ($100,807 in revenue) in 2023; 9,553 tickets ($165,000 in revenue) in 2024; and 5,570 tickets ($79,910 in revenue) from January through May.

Wigglesworth’s goal is to increase museum visitation over the next few years to 120,000 annually, she said. She also wants to attract more repeat local visitors through frequent updates to museum exhibits and artifacts on display.

To boost visitation and to promote events and programs like the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Festival, the museum’s fifth anniversary on Wednesday and a monthly athlete meet-and-greet opportunity called Starting Line Saturday, the museum increased the amount of money it is spending on advertising this year, spokesman Tommy Schield said.

Officials have invested in digital and traditional media to promote the museum across local and state markets, as well as select out-of-state markets that offer direct flights to Colorado Springs, he said.

The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum also hired Chief Content and Integration Officer Lindsay Flanagan Huban to lead the development, integration and management of content across the institution.

The museum offers virtual tours and book clubs, allowing people from all over the world to interact. In the last two years, the museum has experienced a “modest increase” of visitors from outside the Pikes Peak region as compared to those who live locally, Wigglesworth said.

The facility was named this month as a nominee in the USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards for Best Attraction for Sports Fans. Voting is open now through 9:59 a.m. on Aug. 18.

New exhibits include the interactive Beyond the Podium: Celebrating the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame, which opened July 11 and runs through April 30. It spotlights Team USA Hall of Famers and teams, with artifacts that have never been exhibited before, and showcases the legacies of inductees like Herb Brooks, Billie Jean King, Jesse Owens and James Connolly. It will also include images and footage from the 2025 Hall of Fame class.

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To mark 100 days out from the 2026 Winter Games, the museum in October will reopen a “refreshed” Winter Games exhibit featuring several new artifacts and stories, Wigglesworth said.

Additionally, the facility is working to obtain accreditation from the nonprofit American Alliance of Museums, which represents and champions museums in all fields. Accreditation with the AAM is the highest national recognition for U.S. museums; it demonstrates the museum meets the nonprofit’s rigorous standards and boosts its credibility and value to funders, insurers, the community and others, according to the AAM website.

Museums are ineligible for accreditation until they’ve operated for at least two years, the website states. The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum is moving through the accreditation process on a “very typical timeline,” Wigglesworth said. She anticipates the museum will move through the AAM assessment process next year and could earn accreditation in 2027.

Shane Mailman, executive director of the International Sports Heritage Association that promotes and supports sports heritage-related institutions, said measuring a museum’s success is relative and varies by facility.

Visitation data is a key metric, but not necessarily revenues, he said. Some museums don’t charge admission fees, while others do, for example.

In general, sport museums allow visitors to relive significant moments in history and connect them to their heroes, he said.

“Sports captivates people. You can remember where you were when your favorite team won the World Series, Super Bowl or NBA Championship. You can remember when your favorite player made the spectacular catch, hit the game-winning home run or hit the buzzer-beater to win the game. … Sport heroes are larger than life, and a successful sport museum brings these heroes to life for the visitor. You get to relive moments in time where human beings seem to be immortal, accomplishing things that almost all of us would only dream of doing,” Mailman said.

To celebrate its fifth anniversary on Wednesday, the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum is offering $5 admission and special programming, in addition to the exhibits, such as athlete appearances and meet-and-greets, Touch a Truck with the Colorado Springs Fire Department, demonstrations and more.

For more information, visit usopm.org.