Tag Tokyo OlympicsCoronavirus

Schedule
Tokyo, March 5, 2020 (Reuters/NAN) Japan’s Olympics minister signalled on Thursday the Summer Games would go ahead as planned from July even as the coronavirus outbreak spreads to new parts of the country.

The minister, Seiko Hashimoto, made the comments on the same day Japan reported its biggest one-day increase in new cases of coronavirus.

Broadcaster NHK reported confirmed cases had risen to 1,036 nationwide as of Thursday morning, 36 more than the previous day.

And while plans for the Games to go ahead were unchanged, a state visit to Japan by Chinese President Xi Jinping was delayed following a decision by both Tokyo and Beijing.

The Olympics minister had stirred controversy earlier this week by saying the contract with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) “could be interpreted as allowing a postponement” of the Games within calendar 2020.

“Based on the fact that the IOC never mentioned about cancelling or postponing the Tokyo Games at its meeting yesterday (Wednesday), I don’t expect a cancellation notice or anything of that sort,” Hashimoto told parliament.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said in a statement the metropolitan government was working in full collaboration with the IOC and organisers “to ensure the delivery of a safe and secure Games.”

Japan’s western prefecture of Shiga reported its first coronavirus infection on Thursday, a day after the announcement of a first case in the southern prefecture of Miyazaki.

National broadcaster NHK also reported new coronavirus infections in Kyoto, Sapporo and Niigata.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Japan and China would arrange a better time for Xi to visit as they have agreed to prioritise the fight against the coronavirus.

The delay in Xi’s visit, originally planned for early April, will not affect Japan-China relations, he told a news conference.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters in Beijing the two countries would maintain close communication on the timing of Xi’s visit, without elaborating.

Japan plans to impose two-week quarantines on Chinese and South Korean visitors, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

Twelve people have died from the disease in Japan, according to the health ministry.

The rapid spread of the virus has raised questions about whether Tokyo can host the Olympics as scheduled from July 24, with the effects being felt by other sporting events.

On Wednesday, the Japanese Rugby Football Union announced that next month’s Asia Sevens Invitational has been cancelled due to concerns over the coronavirus outbreak.

The competition doubles as a test event for rugby sevens at the Tokyo Olympics.

The Tokyo marathon was held this month without the participation of non-elite runners, and with fewer volunteers and spectators.

Hashimoto told the upper house on Thursday that the final decision on holding the Games as planned rested with the IOC.

“Cancellation or delay of the Games would be unacceptable for the athletes,” Hashimoto said. “An environment where athletes can feel at ease and focus should be firmly prepared.”

Under the host city contract, the IOC has the right to terminate the contract if it has reasonable grounds to believe the safety of the Games would be seriously threatened.

And organisers have made provisions to cancel Tokyo 2020 in the event of a massive earthquake or other natural disaster, Japan’s Mainichi newspaper reported.

But IOC head Thomas Bach on Wednesday voiced confidence the Games would go ahead, saying organisers were receiving expert information from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and others.

He added that the words “postponement” and “cancellation” had not been mentioned at the IOC’s executive board meeting.

Some Tokyo residents thought differently.

“I think the Olympics should be cancelled in this case because it is a dangerous situation,” 77-year-old Yufumi Tamaki told Reuters on Thursday.

“I feel sorry for the athletes and the people who have prepared for the Games, but it is more important to save lives.”(Reuters/NAN)
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(Edited by Emmanuel Okara and Olawale Alabi)

Money
Tokyo, March 3, 2020 (Reuters/NAN) Concerns are swirling that Japan’s dream of hosting the Tokyo 2020 Olympics could be a fatality of the spread of the new coronavirus.

This has jolted organisers, sponsors, and media firms who have spent billions of dollars in the run-up to the event.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach said late last month that the IOC was “fully committed” to holding the July 24 to Aug. 9 Games on schedule.

And a senior Japanese official told Reuters there was no “Plan B”.

Below are the financial and economic factors at risk.

OLYMPIC COSTS

Organisers said in December the Games were expected to cost some 1.35 trillion yen (9.67 billion pounds).

But that figure did not include an estimated three billion yen for moving the marathon and walking events from Tokyo to the northern city of Sapporo to avoid summer heat.

Tokyo 2020’s budget is split between the organising committee and local and national governments, with the IOC contributing more than 800 million dollars.

Organisers say the national government will have paid some 150 billion yen —- mainly for funding a new National Stadium.

Japan’s Board of Audit, however, put government spending between the bid in 2013 and 2018 at 1.06 trillion yen, a discrepancy organisers attributed to differences in the definition of “Games-related” spending.

SPONSORS

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics have generated record domestic sponsorship revenues of more than three billion dollars.

That does not include partnerships with Japanese companies Toyota, Bridgestone and Panasonic, and others such as South Korea’s Samsung.

They have, through a TOP sponsors programme, separate deals with the IOC worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

INSURANCE

Global insurers face a hefty bill if the coronavirus forces the cancellation of the Games, with estimates of the cost of insuring the showpiece running into billions of dollars.

The IOC takes out about 800 million dollars of protection for each Summer Games, which covers most of the roughly one billion dollars investment it makes in each host city.

Insurance sources estimated it would pay a premium of about two to three percent, giving a bill of up to 24 million dollars to insure the Tokyo event.

Analysts with the financial services firm Jefferies estimate the insured cost of the 2020 Olympics at two billion dollars, including TV rights and sponsorship, plus 600 million dollars for hospitality.

MEDIA

NBC Universal in December announced it had already sold more than one billion dollars in advertising commitments in its planned U.S. broadcasts of the Games.

It was on track to surpass 1.2 billion dollars, Variety reported.

The company’s parent, Comcast, agreed to pay 4.38 billion dollars for U.S. media rights to four Olympics from 2014 to 2020, Variety said.

Discovery Communications, the parent of television channel Eurosport, has agreed to pay 1.3 billion euros to screen the Olympics from 2018 to 2024 across Europe.

During a recent call with investors, Gunnar Wiedenfels, Discovery’s chief financial officer, suggested a cancelled Olympics was “not going to have any adverse impact on our financials”, Variety reported.

It added that executives said the company had insurance to safeguard its investment.

HIT TO JAPAN’S ECONOMY

Most of the domestic spending on the Olympics has been done, so a cancellation would have minimal impact in that regard, economists said.

A Bank of Japan study in 2016 estimated Games-related spending would peak at 0.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018.

Research consultancy Capital Economics noted further that this will also be less than 0.2 percent of GDP in 2020.

Tourism, a major contributor to recent Japanese growth, could take a hit, although economists said the greater threat was from the coronavirus spread itself.

Last year, Japan hosted 31.9 million foreign visitors, who spent nearly 4.81 trillion yen (43.1 billion dollars).

Nomura Securities had forecast consumption of 240 billion yen from event-related tourism in 2020, which it said would evaporate if the Olympics were cancelled.

Citigroup Global Markets Japan economist Kiichi Murashima said a loss of events-related tourism alone would chip 0.2 percentage points off GDP growth in the July-September quarter against the previous quarter.

“But the chilling impact of the virus on an already struggling Japanese economy, and on global growth if the spread did not peak, means Japan’s GDP can show zero or even negative growth in the July-September quarter,’’ he said.

“A failure to contain the global spread of the virus will scupper a scenario that sees Japan’s economy posting a V-shaped recovery after two quarters of negative growth through March,’’ Jesper Koll, a senior adviser at U.S. asset manager WisdomTree, said.(Reuters/NAN)
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(Edited by Olawale Alabi)