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Senior International Olympic Committee member Richard Pound was emphatic in an interview with a British newspaper. |
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"Barring Armageddon that we can't see or anticipate, these things are a go," Pound told the Evening Standard. |
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Tokyo is under a COVID-19 state of emergency, but IOC Vice President John Coates has said the games will open on July 23 - state of emergency, or no state of emergency. |
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As an exclamation point, Australia's softball team - the first major group of athletes from abroad to set up an Olympic base in Japan - arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday. |
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So the Olympics are barreling ahead. But why? |
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Start with billions of dollars at stake, a contract that overwhelmingly favors the IOC, and a decision by the Japanese government to stay the course, which might help Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga keep his job. |
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These factors have overridden scathing criticism from medical bodies that fear the Olympics may spread COVID-19 variants, and a call for cancellation from Asahi Shimbun, a games' sponsor and the country's second-largest selling newspaper. The United States Department of State has issued a Level-4 "Do not travel" warning for Japan with Tokyo and other areas under a state of emergency that expires on June 20. |
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And there's saving face. Japan has officially spent $15.4 billion on the Olympics, but several government audits suggest it's much more. All but $6.7 billion is public money. Geopolitical rival China is to hold the 2022 Winter Olympics just six months after Tokyo ends, and could claim centerstage should Tokyo fail. |
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A not-for-profit based in Switzerland, the IOC has ironclad control under terms of the so-called Host City Contract, and it's unlikely to cancel on its own since it would lose billions in broadcast rights and sponsorship income. |
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Though it portrays itself as a sporting league of nations, the IOC is a multi-billion dollar sports business that derives almost 75% of its income from selling broadcast rights. Another 18% comes from 15 top sponsors. |
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Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College in Massachusetts who has written extensively about the Olympics, estimates the IOC could lose about $3.5 billion-$4 billion in broadcast revenue if the Tokyo Games were canceled. He suggested a small portion of this, between $400 million and $800 million, might be made up by cancellation insurance. |
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U.S. broadcaster NBCUniversal is the IOC's largest single source of income. |
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"The IOC also feels a commitment by the momentum of history to do this," Zimbalist said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Their whole DNA is saying: 'do it, do it, do it.' The Japanese government really does not have the right to cancel the games. They can go to the IOC and plead with them, and maybe they are doing that." |
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Of course, the Japanese government could stop the Olympics. It would be a public-relations disaster for the IOC to get into a legal battle with Tokyo, so any such deal would be worked out in private. |
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The IOC's lofty image belies myriad corruption scandals in the last several decades. The president of the Japanese Olympic Committee was forced to resign two years ago - he was also an IOC member - in a scandal linked to bribing IOC members. A similar scandal surrounded Rio de Janeiro's bid to land the 2016 Olympics. |
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"The Olympics are a very, very strong brand. They're a unique brand. They're a monopoly," Zimbalist said. "They are not regulated by any government. All of those things have created a sense of invulnerability, perhaps." |
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The medical community has offered persistent but ineffective opposition. The 6,000-member Tokyo Medical Practitioners' Association asked Prime Minister Suga to cancel. So did the Japan Doctors Union, whose chairman warned the Olympics could spread variants of the coronavirus. Nurses and other medical groups have also pushed back. |
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Last week in a commentary, the New England Journal of Medicine said the IOC's decision to hold the Olympics was "not informed by the best scientific evidence." And the The British Medical Journal in an editorial in April asked organizers to "reconsider" holding the games. |
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An online petition demanding cancellation gathered about 400,000 signatures in a few weeks, but several street protests have mostly fizzled. Depending on how the question is phrased, 50-80% oppose the games opening. |
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Suga is moving ahead despite the dissension. |
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Post time 2-6-2021 08:28 PM
