Barring a thunderclap, the Tokyo Olympic Games will begin in a month, on July 23. With a year of delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This delay has resulted in numerous additional costs, which Reuters now figures at around 2.5 billion euros, or 500 million more than in December. The bill for games has thus increased from around 13 billion to 15.5 billion in the space of a year. What it costs to pay salaries, keep infrastructure, ensure marketing expenses, logistics, introduce new systems for the reimbursement of tickets, as well as the cost of anti-Covid health measures, which in particular lead to athletes undergo daily tests.
First there is the ticket office. With a limited tonnage in the stadiums and the enclosures hosting the events, ticket revenues, initially estimated at 682 million euros, will melt by more than half. Organizers have announced that they need to reduce the number of tickets to 2.72 million, from the 4.48 million sold in the initial lottery.
In March, Tokyo-2020 announced that the audience could not come from abroad. For Japan, this is a terrible shortfall as tourism has been frozen since last year. In 2019, Japan welcomed 31.9 million foreign visitors, who spent nearly 39 billion euros. The numbers plunged 87% in 2020, due to the pandemic, to just 4.1 million travelers, the lowest level in 22 years.
The unknown of advertising
Next come insurance. The International Olympic Committee takes out protection for each edition of the Summer Games which costs it approximately 670 million euros. Local Tokyo organizers had to take out an additional policy, estimated at 540 million.
More than 60 Japanese companies together paid a record amount of over € 2.5 billion to sponsor the Games. To date, the sponsors have agreed to pay an additional 165 million euros to extend their contracts by one year. This amount does not include the partnerships of the Toyota, Bridgestone, Panasonic and Samsung companies.
The unknown of advertising. NBCUniversal, which bought the IOC’s right to broadcast the Games from 2014 to 2020, would have spent a year, according to Variety magazine, looking for new sponsors and building large-scale campaigns. The turnover for the Olympics to be held in 2020 was nearly a billion. This only covers a quarter of the fees paid by Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal.
Last December, the organizing committee affirmed that the additional cost would be financially supported by itself, as well as the Japanese government and the municipality of Tokyo. The IOC had made a commitment not to collect a percentage of the income from sponsors.
One thing is certain: this overtaking definitely makes Tokyo 2021 the most expensive Summer Games in history, ahead of those organized in London in 2012 (12.2 billion euros).
