The International Olympic Committee (IOC) along with local organisers is trying to ‘simplify’ the postponed Tokyo Olympics. They promised to save money in what one study says is already the most expensive Summer Olympics on record.
The executive board of the IOC is likely to review the proposed cuts on Wednesday. They include about 50 changes to fringe areas.
Organisers say that they had already slashes several billion dollars in costs before the postponement of the Olympics.
Most of the big-ticket spending had already taken place. The expenditure includes the $1.43 billion national stadium, and the $520 million swimming venue.
“We have many measures, and sometimes they look small. But when you take them all together it will represent a large result in terms of both simplification and hopefully … produce some significant savings,” Christophe Dubi said last month. Dubi is the IOC executive director for the Olympic Games.
Mr. Dubi said a search for more cuts would continue.
LOSS OF SPONSORS
Organising committee CEO Toshiro Muto acknowledged last month that some sponsors have backed out. The loss of sponsors is in the midst of a slumping economy, the pandemic, and uncertainty around the Olympics really happening.
“I can’t say that all contracts have been renewed,” he said.
Any shortfall in this privately funded operating budget will have to be made up from somewhere else. The document handed out last month by organisers showed them considering measures to increase donations. The donations would help make up for lost income.
To keep sponsors on board, the IOC and local organizers have talked confidently in the last several months.
Organisers have said it won’t be until the end of the year, or early in 2021, when detailed steps will be announced about how to hold the Olympics in the midst of a pandemic. This will include decisions about attendance by local fans, non-Japanese fans, and rules under which athletes will enter Japan, vaccines, quarantines, and so forth.
Japan has reported about 1,600 deaths from COVID-19 and has had strict entry rules in place for citizens from 159 countries.