The Tokyo Olympics Staggering Price

The Tokyo Olympics made history even before they began. The first Games to ever be postponed. They're also on track to be the most expensive Summer Olympics Games ever.

The Tokyo Olympics are set to be the maximum luxurious Olympics on record.

when Japan won its bid to host the Olympics in 2013, it said that it would cost around $7.4 billion before the pandemic, the budget had risen by 70% to $26 billion and that's not surprising.

Japan's Board of Audit said the cost would exceed $20 billion. That was before pandemic-related costs set in. The biggest costs for the Olympics are the facilities. The new National Stadium here in Tokyo, as well as several other large facilities, aquatic centers, and others that have been built for the Games that cost over $3 billion.

The same amount that was spent on renovating other facilities to bring them up to standard for the Games. The whole thing, in terms of venues, was around $7.5 billion. The other big cost is the operational budget for the Olympics. It's around $2 billion.   Almost every Olympics ends up going over budget. Bids are usually an optimistic estimate. 

Japanese authorities auditors have stated general spending tops $20 billion.

This one-year delay and we've also had the pandemic. The one-year postponement meant that there were additional costs incurred for renegotiating contracts for venues, keeping staff on for an additional period, and various other things, which added to the overall budget.

The Tokyo Olympics are now proceeding with COVID countermeasures that require new costs, manpower, and infrastructure.

According to event organizers, the postponement and COVID measures will add an estimated $2.5 billion to the Games' budget. On top of those direct costs, COVID is also taking away much of Japan's ability to recoup.

 Ticket sales would be around $800 million and now they are close to zero because be almost no spectators. almost no income from visitors. Athletes and officials who have come here from overseas might spend some money on the amounts that the organizers were hoping for from spectators who would fill the stadiums, buy merchandise, spend money in hotels and restaurants and that could be, some economists much as $2 billion.      

Corporate sponsors have contributed around $3 billion to the Games and the IOC has contributed $650 million to help cover the extra costs resulting from the pandemic. Still, that leaves the bulk of the costs to Japan with little ability to recoup in the short term.  Even the most expensive Summer Olympics in history pales in comparison to the overall cost of the pandemic.

Japan has spent around $800 billion on stimulus packages, three of them, because of COVID. The pandemic is obviously the most expensive thing to deal with. If the Olympics makes the pandemic worse and there have to be new stimulus measures, those could be fair larger than the actual budget of the Olympics.