Why the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Will Be Like No Other

(Bloomberg) -- When the coronavirus pandemic forced Tokyo last year to delay the Summer Olympics and Paralympics to July 2021, organizers kept the Tokyo 2020 name, saying they wanted the event to be seen as a “light at the end of the tunnel.” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has been determined to hold the global sports spectacle, even with Covid-19 still spreading. They will look like no other games since the modern Olympics started in the late 19th century, with no fans allowed at events in and around Tokyo. This means a financial hit for Japan, which has spent billions of dollars to host.

1. When are the games to take place?

From July 23 to Aug. 8. The Paralympics are to begin Aug. 24. It’s the first staging of a modern Olympics in an odd-numbered year. All indications are that the games will go on as planned, even after Tokyo declared a new state of emergency. The Japanese public’s opposition to moving ahead with the Tokyo Olympics has been losing steam, according to media polls done in June. As for the Beijing Winter Olympics, which start six months after the Tokyo games, there remains a question of whether it will be forced to alter its plans.

2. What are the precautions in Tokyo?

Athletes don’t need to be vaccinated to participate. Organizers do require a negative Covid test prior to arrival in Japan, and participants will be subject to a three-day quarantine after they land. They also will be required to get tested daily. Olympic boss Thomas Bach has said 85% of the residents in the Olympic Village will arrive in Japan vaccinated and almost all of the International Olympic Committee members and staff will be as well. Athletes are subject to a slew of infection control guidelines outlined in a “Playbook” and their movement in Japan is restricted.

3. How is it working regarding infections?

The athletes and officials are in a so-called bubble to keep them isolated from the general public. But positive tests found among those in the athletes’ village in Tokyo days ahead of the games have stoked concern about whether the precautions are sufficient. In addition, other athletes, including a U.S. gymnast, have tested positive outside the village in Japan, raising worries they may have infected teammates. As of July 20, there were 71 Covid cases recorded among people associated with the Olympics, according to organizers.

4. Who decided on moving forward with the games?

As Suga has noted, the International Olympic Committee has the final say. Clause 66 of the host city contract cites various grounds for termination, including “if the IOC has reasonable grounds to believe, in its sole discretion, that the safety of participants in the games would be seriously threatened or jeopardized for any reason whatsoever.”

5. Will anyone see the events in person?

All fans, even residents of Japan, will be excluded from events in Tokyo and surrounding areas, though some prefectures that see few infection cases can still accept domestic spectators. That decision came as the resurgence of virus cases in Tokyo pushed the government to place the capital under a new state of emergency. Already in March, organizers had said that spectators from overseas wouldn’t be allowed so as to limit crowd size. (Some 600,000 foreign visitors were expected to attend last year before the postponement.)

6. What has postponement cost?

The bill is at least 300 billion yen ($2.7 billion), with the central government, Tokyo Metropolitan Government and organizing committee splitting the costs. The host city contract between Tokyo and the IOC doesn’t address postponement. The loss of spectators deals a fresh blow to a tourism industry counting on revenue from Olympic visitors to recoup losses from the pandemic. About 7.8 million tickets were made available for the Olympics before the delay. By keeping the name Tokyo 2020, even after the calendar turned to 2021, the IOC insured that logos, packaging, t-shirts, merchandise and broadcast chyrons remain the same -- a cost-saving move for sponsors and partners.

7. Where does this leave sponsors?

Having to recalibrate their marketing plans. Toyota Motor Corp., for example, said it wouldn’t air television advertisements in Japan during the Olympics and its president won’t attend the opening ceremony on concerns about holding the event during a pandemic. All sponsors retained their rights despite the postponement. The IOC’s top-tier global sponsors -- an exclusive list of 14 companies including Coca-Cola Co. and Visa Inc. -- pay well over $1 billion every four years to be associated with the games. Those agreements tend to span multiple Olympics, whereas local sponsors are in it just for this event. Tokyo organizers leaned on national pride to score an unprecedented level of support from 68 domestic sponsors such as Asahi beer and Asics sneakers -- raising more than $3.3 billion, triple the previous record for an Olympics.

8. Has an Olympics ever been called off?

Five Olympic Games were scrapped, all because of world wars: The summer games were canceled in 1916, 1940 and 1944 as were the winter games in 1940 and 1944. The 1940 games, which were to have been hosted by Tokyo, were initially postponed, but then canceled. The only time an Olympics got switched was when the 1976 winter games were moved to Innsbruck, Austria, from Denver after people in Colorado protested spiraling costs.

9. Has anything else gone wrong?

The Tokyo Olympics organizing committee has been racked by sexism scandals. Creative director Hiroshi Sasaki resigned in March after suggesting that a plus-size female comedian appear in a swine outfit at the opening ceremony as a character called “Olympig.” Weeks earlier, former committee head Yoshiro Mori resigned after making disparaging remarks about women, saying they talked too much in board meetings. The man in charge of composing music for the opening ceremony, Keigo Oyamada, resigned a few days before the event after an interview surfaced where he admitted to viciously bullying childhood classmates with disabilities.

The Reference Shelf

• The IOC’s informational website on the rescheduled games, and one by the Tokyo 2020 organizers.
• A profile of Seiko Hashimoto -- a seven-time Olympian who took over the Tokyo organizing committee after Mori.
• Bloomberg News looked at the delay’s cost to advertisers, the debate over allowing spectators and the five biggest challenges for Tokyo 2020.
• Bloomberg Opinion’s Tim Culpan says Japan’s medical staff may be the heroes of these games, and Adam Minter questions Japan’s experiment with baseball.

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