The Tokyo Olympics Are Postponed. What Now?

On March 24, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that his government and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have agreed to postpone the Tokyo Olympics, originally due to begin on July 24 2020, for about a year. “Given the spread of the new infectious disease, we determined that it would be difficult to reschedule the Olympics by the end of 2020,” Abe added. The rescheduled Olympics will be held in Tokyo by the end of next summer. 

Whether the Tokyo Olympics should or would be postponed, or even cancelled, had been the subject of much speculation as the novel coronavirus quickly spread beyond Asia. As the pandemic picked up the pace and expanded across North America and Europe, the number of the countries and teams calling for the postponement of the Olympics grew. On March 20, the Washington Post published an editorial arguing that “The Olympics must be cancelled or postponed.” Some people criticized Abe for not making a decision on the postponement sooner. 

However, deciding to postpone, or cancel, the Olympics quickly is a feat easier said than done. Consider all the stakeholders, which include not only the participating countries and their athletes, but also all the international athletic organizations that host their own competitions (remember Japan hosted the Rugby World Cup in 2019), and the sponsors for the Olympic games such as media organizations, food and beverage companies, and athletic goods industries, to name a few. Getting the IOC on board for a postponement, even given the current global pandemic crisis, must have been no easy task. 

However, the decision to postpone the Olympics is almost the easiest step in the process, considering what awaits Abe in the days ahead. Externally, his government will have to restart negotiations with numerous stakeholders over scheduling the Olympics. And the negotiation must take place amid so many unknowns – when the impact of the coronavirus begin to slow? Can vaccines and/or an effective treatment be developed and how soon? As the Washington Post editorial rightly points out, an international sporting event with athletes and spectators flying to Japan from more than 200 countries “has all the making of an incubator” for coronavirus. 

The reality is, even though the countries and regions in East Asia seem to be leading the world in pulling out of the initial crisis phase of fighting COVID-19 and slowly returning to normalcy, the rest of the world has only begun to grapple with the fight against this disease. And those hardest hit at the current moment are all industrial countries that are supposed to be equipped with advanced medical technologies and facilities to respond. The virus has not even fully hit more vulnerable places such as Africa. Negotiating the rescheduling of the Summer Games in this global environment alone will be a rocky path.

Then Abe will have to address the domestic fallout from the postponement. The Japanese government is estimated to have already invested between $12-25 billion to prepare for the Olympics, both improving existing facilities and building new ones. The postponement of the games means almost a year-long delay in collecting any return on these investments. In addition, industries – hospitality and tourism, for example – that have made business plans anticipating a huge influx of visitors to Japan for the Olympics will have to face a year’s delay in seeing those gains. In the meantime, they will unlikely have an opportunity to recover any of the investment they may have made as international travel will most definitely slow for the rest of the year due to the impact of COVID-19. No one has even begun to add up the economic cost for those businesses and the impact that will have on the Japanese economy. 

The Abe government’s job of dealing with the coronavirus itself is far from over. Japan is currently crawling out of self-quarantine and people’s lives are slowing returning to normal. But as all the children return to school in April and large gatherings resume across the country, Japan may see another spike in the number of coronavirus patients. Of course, people cannot stay in self-quarantine for indefinite period of time. The decision to relax restrictions on people’s social lives is a delicate one that needs to strike a balance between giving people hope that their lives are returning to normal while preventing another public health catastrophe. However, the Abe government’s response to the initial outbreak has already met strong criticism for not being timely enough, and not disseminating reliable information to the public quickly. Should Japan’s response to another spike in coronavirus cases lag again, it will be a devastating blow to confidence in the Abe government. 

Abe expressed his government’s determination to host the Olympics next year “in a perfect condition as the proof that the human beings have overcome coronavirus.” Abe’s legacy as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister since the Meiji Restoration will also depend on fulfilling that promise.