ThisNY Times article lays out the reasons behind "Tokyo 2021": The coronavirus crisis will simply make it too difficult to go ahead with Tokyo 2020 as planned, numerous other sporting events are already canceled or postponed elsewhere in the world, to have the Olympics proceed this year as planned but with empty spectator venues would be a farce, and cancellation of the Olympics outright would be a devastating blow to Japan, which has invested an immense sum of money and effort into hosting the Games.
I just read this from yesterday. It sure makes it sound like the IOC is planning on going ahead in July, and I was wondering, what happens if they had the Olympics and nobody showed up, tourists or athletes?
Plus, this answers a question I had about who would show the most wanton greed in the face of the current pandemic. IOC was on my short list…
So much money, political capital (including probably a few local bits of legislation) and effort goes into each Olympics I can understand them not wanting to cancel/postpone until it’s absolutely impossible to do anything else. But I think it must be close to that time now.
So much money, political capital (including probably a few local bits of legislation) and effort goes into each Olympics I can understand them not wanting to cancel/postpone until it’s absolutely impossible to do anything else. But I think it must be close to that time now.
We’re already at a point where qualifiers are being cancelled, training is disrupted, etc.
I presume that, like many other big events, it’s a game of chicken as who who actually says the word “cancel” first as various contracts may play out differently if the government says “you can’t have it” vs the IOC saying “we’re not going to do it”
Someone will. In terms of tourists, someone will always come. Maybe not enough to fill arenas but that’s actually common at Olympics. Anyway, it’s four months away. If coronavirus is such a risk in four months that people cannot attend a sporting event without dying, we have bigger problems.
In terms of athletes, it’s a game theory thing. The more top athletes that do not come, the greater the potential reward for those that do. Someone will come compete.
Read earlier they need to pull the plug by May. That makes sense to me. If they go on they could sell cheap tickets just to locals or in some cases just have free tickets. And they would give partial refunds for tickets already bought.
I think it was Atlanta 2 local guys went to field hockey but they thought it was another name for lacrosse. Reminds me of 2 little old ladies going to the county fair instead of Knoxville world’s fair and they were looking for China pavilion at the county fair
It should be noted too that if Tokyo indeed is postponed to 2021, then we might see a gap of only 5-7 months between the Summer and Winter Olympics (Beijing 2022). Odd.
USA archery pushed back their trials to June. Not a lot of fans at those events so if fans are banned it won’t matter much. In case you are wondering, they shoot at 70 meters. Used to be 90 but they found that 70 is much better for TV.
Which is, in fact, how it was until not all that long ago. Through 1992, the Winter Games and Summer Games were held in the same calendar year (typically, the Winter Games at the beginning of the year, and the Summer Games a few months later).
From that point forward, the IOC offset the Winter Games by two years, compared to the Summer Games. Due to that, there were Winter Games in both 1992 (Albertville, France) and 1994 (Lillehammer, Norway).
There’s already been empty arena games held so from that standpoint it is not the end of the world. I would imagine the opening and closing ceremonies would be scaled way down.
But yeah the problem is many countries trials are being delayed and if it’s still not safe many countries will just refuse to send their athletes and a repeat of the 1980 Olympics would not be a good look.
Another issue is that all this social distancing will hopefully flatten the pandemic curve which would save lives but extend the pandemic well over the summer. I see no reason why they can’t just postpone the games until September; by then not only should be on the downside of the epidemic but I’m sure there will be medicines available to treat this.
If not just go to 2021.
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If they can’t sell tickets it’ll be a financial bloodbath. Tokyo will lose a ton of money anyway - Olympic hosts pretty much always do - but this would be a lot of money they didn’t expect to lose.
If it’s between a delay and playing to empty stadia, they’ll delay it.
I suspect the truth will be somewhere in the middle. Credits/trades if delayed, refunds if cancelled altogether. Hopefully, the organizers were smart enough to insure themselves, but I have no idea how that process would work under Japanese law - if the ticket conditions give the organizers an out and they don’t accept it, is the insurer still liable? There’s also the possibility that the Japanese government would step in with a bailout.
One thing that I’ve heard is that they planned on turning the athlete’s village accommodations into condos after the games, and they’ve already been sold. So if the games get delayed by six months or a year or whatever, what happens there?
If the Games get postponed, and someone with tickets can’t attend on the new date, I could see how they wouldn’t want to give a refund. But if the Games are actually cancelled, I think ticket holders are entitled to a refund for an event that never takes place.
How much do ticket sales account for in terms of financing of the Olympics? I figured the real money was in selling the right to telecast in various countries, and in the corporate sponsorship. I know that that tickets sounds expensive to us (especially for the few marquee events like the opening ceremonies), but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what it costs to build an 80,000 seat stadium that’s going to be used for two weeks.
Reminds me of 2 little old ladies going to the county fair instead of Knoxville world’s fair and they were looking for China pavilion at the county fair