Final price tag for delayed Tokyo Olympics: $13 billion

TOKYO — The final price tag for last year’s COVID-delayed Tokyo Olympics was put at $13 billion (1.4 trillion Japanese yen), the organizing committee said Tuesday in its final act before it is dissolved at the end of the month.

The cost was twice what was forecast in 2013 when Tokyo was awarded the Games. However, the final price tag presented by organizers is lower than the $15.4 billion they predicted when the Olympics ended just under 11 months ago.

“We made an estimate, and the estimate has gone down lower than we expected,” Tokyo organizing committee CEO Toshiro Muto said, speaking through an interpreter at a news conference. “As a total amount, whether this is huge or not — when it comes to that kind of talk it is not easy to evaluate.”

Accurately tracking Olympic costs — who pays, who benefits, and what are and are not Games’ expenses — is an evermoving maze. The one-year delay added to the difficulty, as did recent fluctuations in the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the Japanese yen.

Muto said there were savings because of the absence of fans, which cut down on security costs and venue maintenance costs. He talked vaguely about “squeezing” costs and “simplifying” operations to reach the reductions.

However, organizers lost at least $800 million in income from ticket sales because fans were banned due to COVID. Muto called “baseless” reports before and after the postponement that costs might hit $25 billion.

There is one undeniable fact: Japanese government entities, primarily the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, covered about 55 percent of the total expenses. This amounted to about $7.1 billion in Japanese taxpayer money.

The privately funded organizing committee budget covered about $5.9 billion. The International Olympic Committee contributed $1.3 billion to this budget, with the largest contribution of $3.4 billion coming from local sponsors. Organizers also listed $500 million in income from an unspecified “insurance payout.”

A University of Oxford study in 2020 said Tokyo was the most expensive Olympics on record.

It’s impossible to assess the long-term impact of the Tokyo Olympics, particularly in a sprawling city like the Japanese capital where change is constant. The pandemic erased any short-term tourism bounce. Local sponsors, who paid $3.4 billion to be linked to the Olympics, didn’t seem very happy according to local reports.