The Five Biggest Challenges Facing the Delayed 2020 Olympics Now
- Organizers have a year to rearrange hundreds of moving parts
- Timeline is built on assumption that virus outbreak subsides
By agreeing to the first postponement in 124-year history of the modern Olympics, Tokyo 2020 organizers, sponsors, athletes and fans now face a whole new set of questions and logistical challenges. There’s a reason it takes many years and several billions of dollars to host the games: the two-week event is built on a Jenga-tower of thousands of independent economic interests.
Still, relative to canceling the competitions outright or trying to hold a diluted version, postponement turned out to be the best of a slew of bad options -- for Tokyo, which expected a bump from the tourism and hospitality around the games, for the International Olympic Committee, which gets 73% of its revenue from broadcasters, and for sponsors, the companies that have already spent years and millions to build an advertising strategy around the games.