Los Tokyo Olympics they had a final cost of 1.42 billion yen (12,310 million euros), a amount that skyrocketed from the initial budget proposed by the organizers mainly due to the impact of the pandemic.
The official figure for the cost of Tokyo 2020 was announced at the last meeting of the board of directors of its organizing committee before its dissolution, held this Tuesday in the Japanese capital.
the final budget includes the expenses derived from the postponement of the Games from their initially scheduled datethe summer of 2020, up to a year later due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the anti-contagion health measures.
The Tokyo Games were held in a bubble format that brought unprecedented restrictions on athletes and other participantssuch as technical teams, representatives of national committees or journalists, and without an audience in the stands by decision of the Japanese authorities.
“No one had ever experienced such a Games before.neither organizers nor the International Olympic Committee”, highlighted this Tuesday the president of the organizing committee, Seiko Hashimotoat a press conference.
Hashimoto also stressed that the Games “they could not have been held” were it not for the “difficult decisions and combined efforts” that the organizers had to assume, among which he mentioned border restrictions, measures to protect the health of athletes and citizens or the absence of spectators in the stands.
Japan faced before the celebration of the Games a wave of covid-19 infections which led the organizers and the Japanese Executive to question their viability due to the risk of contagion between athletes or causing an even greater circulation of the virus among the local population, as well as the budget increase they brought.
The previous version of the budgetfrom last December, stood at 13.6 billion dollars (12,872 million euros), and already included an estimate of the extra costs derived from rescheduling the event.
The slight downgrade from that previous estimate This has been achieved thanks to the saving and simplification measures applied by the organizers, such as reduce the number of foreign participants -not counting athletes- and events dedicated to them o cuts in sports venues and other facilities.
Of final cost of the games, most of it was provided by the central executive and the government of Tokyowhile the IOC injected some 800 million dollars (757 million euros) and los sponsors contributed about $3.9 billion (3,692 million euros).
Japan had calculated the cost of the Games at about 7,000 million dollars (6,625 million euros) in 2013, when the Tokyo bid was chosen as the Olympic venue for 2020 ahead of the other applicants, Madrid and Istanbul.
The president of the organizing committee expressed her hope that despite all the difficulties that Tokyo 2020 faced, these Games be remembered in the future “for their contribution to achieving a more sustainable, more harmonious, more diverse and more inclusive society”.
He also hoped that Tokyo’s experience in dealing with exceptional circumstances such as a global health crisis “will be useful for other Olympic venues” in the future, as well as to make the Games “more sustainable”.
