Tokyo.- Nearly two-thirds (65%) of the 2020 Tokyo Games sponsors, postponed for a year due to coronavirus, are in doubt about maintaining their commitments, according to a poll released on Friday by public television network NHK. Some sponsors were concerned about the consequences of their promotional operations during the Games whose exposure could be reduced, as at risk of covid-19 spread and the rising cost to the organizers, according to NHK.
“We are looking for ways to simplify the organization of the Games, see how we can reduce the complexity of the Games” and their cost, IOC President Thomas Bach said Wednesday in an interview with the AFP, not to mention any closed-door competition. You might be interested: Spanish company will be in charge of remodeling the Azteca StadiumThe sponsors also fear a pure and hard annulment of the Tokyo Games, after the organizers pointed out that 2021 was the “last option” for its celebration. Many of them also explained that they had not yet made a decision as the renegotiation of their contracts with the organizers has not yet begun. More than two-thirds of the questions asked (68%) they noted that the coronavirus crisis had affected their own financial situation. Tokyo-2020 organizers did not estimate the additional costs associated with the one-year postponement of the event. Monetary investments
The IOC, meanwhile, announced in mid-May that it injected $800 million to deal with the coronavirus crisis. The last budget of the Games, published at the end of last December by the organizers, thus before the pandemic and the decision to postpone the event, was nearly $12.5 billion for the Japanese side. However, the Japanese state probably invested almost as much between the allocation of the Games to Tokyo in 2013 and in 2018/19, it had estimated last year the Japanese equivalent of the court of accounts, without this commitment being included in the official budget. Many large Japanese companies in all sectors are sponsors of the Tokyo Games and had planned to put some 348 billion yen on the table (more than $3.25 billion), or nearly half of the expected revenue from the event. Moreover, this amount does not include the shares of Toyota, Panasonic and Bridgestone, which are global sponsors of the IOC in several Olympic Games.The NHK poll was conducted on 78 sponsors, responding to 57 of them.
