NO SIMPLE JOB
Many moving parts to consider in postponing Olympics
The Tokyo Games will be postponed. Longtime International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound’s news drop removed any last doubt.
The rest of the details, well, that’s where it gets tricky.
The Games could be pushed back until sometime this fall. Postponed to the same dates in 2021. Delayed for two years and once again have Winter and Summer Games in the same calendar year.
Or some other option that isn’t immediately obvious.
One possibility that appears to be off the table is holding the Games behind closed doors. The Guardian reported last week that not having spectators is “not an option.”
No option is simple, and all will require extensive negotiations with Tokyo organizers, the Japanese government, broadcasters, the international sports federations and sponsors. And that’s just to start.
“A number of critical venues needed for the Games could potentially not be available anymore,” IOC president Thomas Bach wrote in a letter to the athletes Sunday when raising the possibility of postponement. “The situations with millions of nights already booked in hotels is extremely difficult to handle, and the international sports calendar for at least 33 Olympic sports would have to be adapted.
“These are just a few of many, many more challenges.”
But none are insurmountable.
It’s important to remember that, as far as broadcasters and key sponsors go, these are long-term relationships that span multiple Games, both past and future.
NBC, for example, has had the exclusive U.S. rights to the Olympics since Sydney in 2000, and its current deal runs through the 2032 Games. Coca-Cola has been a sponsor at every Olympics since 1928 and, after an extension last year, will be until at least 2032.
These key stakeholders, as Bach likes to call them, are not going to drop out or publicly whine about the inconvenience a postponement creates. Even if it causes significant scheduling headaches – a fall Games would conflict with NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” package, for example – and forces
contracts to be rewritten, those stakeholders will work with the IOC to find a solution that’s acceptable to all because it’s in everyone’s best interests, over both the short and the long term.
The same could be said for the sports federations that have world championships scheduled for 2021 and/or 2022. While those are significant events for sports big (track and field, swimming) and small (canoe, archery), the Olympics dwarf them all, and everyone knows it.
Concessions will likely have to be made to host cities, and dates and places will have to be adjusted. That produces ripple effects that will be felt a world away.
If the track and field world championships scheduled for August 2021 in Eugene, Oregon, have to be pushed back, it will impact local hotels. Restaurants. Municipal workers.
And on and on it goes.
But everyone recognizes these are extraordinary circumstances, so workarounds can be found.
International Swimming Federation president Julio Maglione said in a radio interview last week that, “The Games should be postponed.”
World Athletics has echoed that stance and indicated Sunday that it has already started talking to organizers in Eugene.
“Oregon ’21 has reassured us they will work with all of their partners and stakeholders to ensure that Oregon is able to host the World Athletics Championships on alternative dates should that prove necessary,” World Athletics spokesperson Yannis Nikolaou told USA TODAY Sports in an email.
The biggest challenges might come from the hosts of the Tokyo Games. And by challenges, we don’t mean resistance.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe views the Tokyo Games as his legacy, and he was initially reluctant to entertain the idea of not holding them on time. But his message shifted last week, which means the IOC should have whatever buy-in it needs from Tokyo organizers.
But there are still logistical headaches.
Tokyo has 10 temporary venues. While some, like the gymnastics arena, are buildings that will be repurposed after the Games, others are more like popups. Will the sand and materials for the beach volleyball venue, to be located in Shiokaze Park along the waterfront, be stored at the park or will organizers have to find somewhere else to stash it?
And what of the athletes village? Some 11,000 athletes were to occupy the village in July. It was built by private developers, who began selling the apartments last May. Though the first residents were not expected to move in until the spring of 2023, that was dependent upon renovation work beginning after the Paralympics concluded Sept. 6.
Perhaps the turnover date is pushed back, or perhaps some parts of the complex open while remaining construction is completed. Either way, those are negotiations that will need to be done with the developers and will likely also require some kind of concessions.
And about those finances … Organizing committees are created with a seven-year shelf life, which go from the date the Games are awarded to after the flame goes out. If there’s a budget for 2021, let alone 2022, it’s a shoestring one to cover expenses associated with shutting down operations, not keeping them running at full capacity.
The operating budget for the Tokyo Games is already $12.6 billion, well over the early projections, and now organizers will need even more cash. The IOC can help – it has north of $2 billion in reserves, according to its 2018 annual report – but this involves a little more than simply dipping into the change jar.
There are hundreds and hundreds of contracts that will need to be revisited, covering everything from caterers to security to landscaping.
“You can’t postpone the Olympic Games like a football match next Saturday,” Bach told a German radio station.
True. But the IOC is going to have to figure out an alternative.
And fast.