Sums help IOC decide
In a first for the Olympic movement, a viral outbreak has forced a delay of games until some time next year
Money talks, which is the short answer for why it took this long for the swells at the International Olympic Committee to listen to reason. For weeks, IOC leaders framed their refusal to shut down Tokyo 2020 as a noble cause instead of a cash grab. But that’s because they could afford to.
Five days earlier, asked whether postponing the games would hurt the committee’s ability to pay its bills on time, president Thomas Bach didn’t have to think long.
“The IOC has no cashflow problems,” he replied.
Never mind that the very same athletes who actually make the games go were expected to continue sacrificing and put their lives on hold in the meantime.
US fencer Kat Holmes, to name one, was set to begin medical school this year, post-Olympics, and won’t know for some time when — or whether — she’ll be able to compete in 2021.
“I didn’t come this far not to give 100 per cent at the Olympics,” she said, adding a moment later, “I don’t want to go into my first year of med school without committing 100 per cent either.”
But it wasn’t the tales about tough choices like Holmes’ or the photos and videos of world-class competitors reduced to lifting weights in empty parking lots, or banging volleyballs off a board set up in the backyard, that finally convinced the IOC and Japanese organisers to pull the plug.
It wasn’t even the threats from Australia and Canada to stay away, or the growing reluctance of the US Olympic Committee to take part.
It was simple maths.
The reported cost to stage Tokyo 2020 was already upwards of US$28 billion ($48b). In the same interview where Bach acknowledged the IOC had plenty of money on hand, he also conceded delaying the games by a year or two posed no real threat to its long-term viability, either.
“We have our risk management policies in place and our insurance and this will make it possible for us to continue our operations and organise future Olympic Games,” Bach said.
“Hide the empty seats” is a popular dictate in the TV sports industry, something executives remind producers and directors about all the time. It’s based on the idea that if only so many fans turned up in the stands, why would a viewer bother to watch?
Well, a cobbled-together Olympics this July would have made hiding anything impossible. It was already a logistical nightmare.
With nearly every sport suspending play in the wake of the pandemic, more than two-thirds of the 11,000 potential Olympians from 200 countries still hadn’t qualified.
There’s no way to know how many of them, not to mention Olympic officials, spectators and corporate sponsors and their clients would have begged off with concerns about safety.
But it’s a safe bet that when Bach laid out the spreadsheets alongside the riskmanagement and insurance policies, he and the rest of the IOC brass concluded they’d be risking a lot more of their nest egg by going ahead this year instead of next.