No overseas fans in Tokyo makes hosting Olympics even more terrible idea

Organizers of the Tokyo Olympics dropped a long-awaited other shoe this weekend, announcing that fans from outside Japan will not be allowed to travel to the games this summer, thanks to Covid concerns:

“In order to give clarity to ticket holders living overseas and to enable them to adjust their travel plans at this stage, the parties on the Japanese side have come to the conclusion that they will not be able to enter into Japan at the time of the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” the Tokyo organizing committee said in a statement.

This was probably unavoidable: While vaccinations are starting to kick into high gear, they’re very uneven country to country, and anyway it’s too soon to know what the shape of the pandemic will look like in July. And refunding ticket sales and hotel bookings and reallocating them to locals will take time, so waiting until the picture is clearer wasn’t really an option.

While some of the planned $800 million in projected ticket sales will be made up by increased sales to Japanese residents, much of it won’t be — prior reports had 10-20% of ticket sales going to purchasers outside Japan, which frankly sounds low, but I guess you need to take into account the crappy sports that it’s hard to give tickets away to. In any case, any shortfall in ticket revenue will land on the Japanese government to cover, because heaven forfend the International Olympic Committee actually take any kind of risk on anything. Plus, not getting overseas visitors blunts the benefits of getting an influx of new spending, even if past Olympics have shown that this effect isn’t nearly all it’s cracked up to be, thanks in part to locals hightailing it out of town to get away from Olympic crowds. Japan has already sunk $15 billion into hosting the 2020 Games, and doesn’t seem likely to see much of that money ever again; which, once more, is absolutely typical for Olympic hosts, but the coronavirus travel restrictions are just the garbage cherry on top of the trash-fire cake.

With the financial black hole that is the Olympics having been clear for decades now, you’d have to think that cities would stop volunteering for the thankless task. Let’s see how that’s going … oh, Brisbane, we really have to have a talk.

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One comment on “No overseas fans in Tokyo makes hosting Olympics even more terrible idea

  1. Carl Lewis after winning Gold Medals summed up what most Americans really think about the Olympics. “Congratulations see you in four years.” Which is why without the Soviet Union, almost no one in this Country would be upset if the Olympics were simply canceled.

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