"We do not know what the situation will be" in four months, recalled on Friday March 20, the head of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, raising hope that the world health situation will allow the holding of the ceremony. opening of the Tokyo Games on July 24.
"It would therefore not be responsible today for making a decision that would be premature."
Calls to postpone the Olympics are growing in number as the coronavirus continues to spread around the world. The American athletics federation itself requested their postponement on Saturday.
Despite this, the International Olympic Committee wishes to keep the Tokyo Olympics four months before the opening ceremony.
In a press release published on the committee's website on March 3, it said that it reaffirmed "its total commitment to ensuring the success of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, which will take place from July 24 to August 9, 2020".
Hope lights up our way to Japan 🇯🇵🕊️
The flame will be exposed in Tohoku, one of the regions most affected by the 2011 disaster. It will broadcast a reconstruction message, #HopeLightsOurWay for # Tokyo2020 🔥
Relive the arrival ceremony: https://t.co/4JDoPpVgT9 pic.twitter.com/umpnyskWOr
"Huge symbolic scope"
Jean-Christophe Rolland, French president of the International Rowing Federation (Fisa), interviewed by AFP, said "to understand" and support this position: "We are still far from July 24. Faced with this completely new crisis, no one cannot predict with certainty its evolution and many scenarios are possible ".
"There is an immense symbolic significance if the Olympic Games are postponed or canceled," considers Nathalie Nenon-Zimmermann, general manager in Paris of the sports marketing agency Only sports & passion, specialist in Olympic sport.
In fact, even after the 1987 financial crisis or the 1991 Gulf War, the 1988 and 1992 Olympic Games did take place. Only the two world wars got the better of the Olympic Games of 1916, 1940 and 1944.
If postponed, "we break a limit today never crossed: the Olympics are no longer immutable except World War", she says.
Diluted decision process
In addition, "the negotiations are to be conducted with a complex range of partners, confirms Patrick Clastres, director of the Center for Olympic Studies and Globalization of Sport at the University of Lausanne." The Tokyo organizing committee, Japanese government, international federations, advertisers and the media. "
Indeed, if the decision rests with the IOC, the Japanese government will have the final say, in conjunction with the local Organizing Committee and on the advice of the World Health Organization.
Financial consequences
90% of the IOC's income is redistributed to sports organizations and athletes. A share of revenues which, for the last Olympic Games in Rio-2016, reached 5.7 billion dollars.
The ecosystem of the Olympic Games is also TV broadcasters and sponsors who have invested a lot of money with the IOC and the organizing committee. "The risk of compensation is to be considered in the event of postponement or worse cancellation. And the financial consequences will trickle down to sport in general", explains Nathalie Nenon-Zimmermann.
In addition, she adds, behind TV rights and sponsorship, "there is also a whole economy linked to the 'activation' of rights", which employs several hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
The heaviness of the organization
The Olympic Games impose many organizational constraints on the host country, particularly in terms of transportation and accommodation. However, many facilities built for the event must be made available at the end of the tests.
The accommodation in the Olympic village, which is intended to accommodate more than 11,000 athletes, must be immediately sold to their owners. "The Olympic village is a problem among thousands of others, stresses Jean-Loup Chappelet, professor at the Graduate Institute of Public Administration in Lausanne and IOC specialist. But it is Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who will unlock the budgets required even if it means taking legislative measures ".
With AFP
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