Tokyo Concerned With Skyrocketing Cost of Hosting Olympics

Photo Courtesy: The Japan Times

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Rome chose to pull the plug on bidding to host the 2024 Olympic Games due to rising costs, and now the organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are running into the same financial issues that concerned Rome.

According to a report from Yahoo! Sports, a group of Japanese experts, under the direction of new Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike, looked into the full costs of hosting the Olympics and came up with a sum of over $30 billion.

In response, Koike directed the organizing committee to look into cost-cutting measures. “We cannot impose the negative legacy onto the Tokyo residents,” he said, according to the Yahoo! report.

Since Tokyo won the bid to host the Games in 2013, the expected cost of hosting has skyrocketed, particularly after Sochi spent a reported $51 billion on the 2014 Winter Games.

Tokyo has already managed to reduce their budget by $1 billion by increasing the use of existing facilities. But that has forced organizers to move the basketball, cycling and taekwondo events outside of the city, with rowing and canoeing possible candidates to be moved as well.

The original design for the Games would have had only three sports taking place more than five miles from the Olympic village, but cost impracticality and the realization that most of these venues would go unused after the Games forced a change in direction.

Yahoo! also notes that organizers could be cutting the size of some venues to reduce costs. The swimming venue, for instance, is currently set to seat 20,000—which would be the largest venue ever for an Olympic swimming facility—but could be cut down to 12,000. (For perspective, the venues used for swimming in Sydney, Beijing, London and Rio all sat between 15,000 and 18,000 spectators.)

Read the full report from Yahoo! Sports here.

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Bill Bell

7 years ago

Insidethegames.com has reported that Tokyo city officials have suggested possibly using the existing Olympic pool from the ’64 Games but I’m sure that’s a non- starter.
Perhaps best solution us for Tokyo yo simply bow and Gand Games over to LA!
Swimming @. UCLA Men’s Gym Pool ( 25 YDS), water polo in the women’s pool ( also 25 YDS), cycling thru the hills of Bel- Air, track @. UCLA’s Drake Stadium, etc.
Nice and compact Olympics.
Cheap too. House everybody in the dorms!