According to the group's Internal Revenue Service filing released Friday, the Chicago 2016 Exploratory Committee spent about $9 million during the initial phase of the bid. It has previously estimated it would spend another $49 million before the International Olympic Committee picks a host city next year.
Organizers have said the bid will be privately financed and that they raised about $32 million between July 2006 and June 2007, the period covered by the recent filing. They ended that period with more than $22 million in cash on hand.
The tax-exempt group says it's on track to have the money it needs.
"Our fundraising for the last year has continued to be robust," Chicago 2016 spokesman Patrick Sandusky said. He would not provide more updated financial figures.
In the race for the 2014 Winter Olympics, which were eventually awarded to the Russian resort city of Sochi, the Russians and a South Korean group bidding for the city of Pyeongchang were each thought to have spent more than $40 million on their bids. A senior IOC member said then that too much money was being spent to win the right to host the games.
U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth has said New York spent at least an estimated $50 million on its losing bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics that will be held in London.
Chicago is likely to advance in the competition for the 2016 Olympics when the IOC meets in Athens next month to whittle down a list of seven cities to an undetermined number of finalists. The host city will be chosen from among those finalists in October 2009.
Along with Chicago, the others vying are Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Tokyo; Madrid, Spain; Doha, Qatar; Prague, Czech Republic, and Baku, Azerbaijan.
"We're hopeful," Sandusky said.
