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Soaring cost of Japan’s 2020 Olympics

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B

Blablurn

Member
As Rio has again showed, the Olympic games invariably leave their host cities with a throbbing hangover. The price tag for the 2016 Rio Games is $4.6 billion (€4.1 billion), 50 per cent over-budget, according to a study by Oxford University’s business school. Forbes says the eventual cost will be at least double that.

That’s par for the course. Not a single Olympic Games since 1960 has met its cost target. The average overrun has been 179 per cent, says the Oxford study. The 1964 Tokyo games cost 10 times more than the Rome Olympics in 1960, and started Japan’s addiction to bond issuance to pay for construction projects.

Costs could top $30 billion

Japan surely knows this history better than most. Yet, the tag for hosting the Tokyo games in 2020 could top $30 billion, more than four times the original estimate, a panel warned this week. The panel, set up by the city’s new governor Yuriko Koike, says the cost for one venue has soared seven-fold since Tokyo’s successful bid in 2013.

Japan’s Olympic Committee (JOC) initially promised a “compact” Games, with 85 per cent of the competition venues within an eight kilometre radius from the athletes’ village on the city’s waterfront. At least one venue, for rowing and canoeing, may now be yanked 250 miles (440km) north-east of the capital’s city centre. That adds to several others – for basketball, cycling and taekwondo – that have already been moved, in one case 90 miles from Tokyo.
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Waterfront
In addition to a clutch of new Olympic venues and a $2-billion stadium, potentially the world’s most expensive, the plans included new roads and railway lines and waterfront redevelopment.

Three years later, heads have cooled. Masuzoe is gone, toppled by a financial scandal, and the Games’ centrepiece has been scrapped. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the stadium was so unpopular the government had to literally return to the drawing board. The cost of the new 80,000-seat venue has been capped at a still startlingly expensive 155 billion yen.

Spiraling construction and security costs are partly to blame. But the panel head, Shinichi Ueyama, also cited a familiar tale of poor governance and leadership. Releasing his report on Thursday, he said the Olympic organisers were irresponsible, like “a company without a president and a chief financial officer.”
Disorganisation

This disorganisation was symbolised by the confusion over the official logo for the Games, which was also scrapped last year amid allegations of plagiarism. There have since been claims of bribery in the bidding process – a panel commissioned by the JOC found, to nobody’s surprise this month, that a $2 million payment to a consulting firm in connection with the bid was “legitimate”.

The sense of money being scattered like confetti alarms taxpayers in a country with a declining population and a public debt load of about $11 trillion (roughly two-and-a-half-times GDP). One reason why a string of earlier Tokyo bids to host the Games failed was lacklustre public support.

That will not be lost on Koike, a populist governor who trounced her establishment rival this summer with a promise of clean government. She praised Ueyama’s report and said she would give it serious thought. But with time ticking (venues must be ready for preliminary events by 2019), she must make decisions quickly, and faces stubborn opposition.

Bête noire

Her bête noire is Yoshiro Mori, president of the Tokyo Games’ organising committee. “For Japan to overturn decisions that have been completely settled with the International Olympic Committee would be extremely difficult,” he said after the panel report was released.

Much of this will be familiar to Japanese old enough to remember the 1964 Games, which turned Tokyo into a 24-hour building site and was plagued by cost-overruns, missed deadlines and scandal. In the end, they were among the most successful Olympics in history, a symbol of Japan’s transformation from wartime pariah to economic superpower. Few would bet against another triumph, but the hangover may well last longer.
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Source: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/worl...aring-cost-of-japan-s-2020-olympics-1.2814008
 
T

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Shit. All of the venues have been over cost since the 1960's?! Why the hell would you bid for the event then!?
 
I

I-hate-u

Member
$2 billion stadium? Are they crazy? That's more than what the Montreal 1976 stadium cost and that was a disaster.
 
M

massoluk

Banned
I, for one, think they will reap profit at the end with all the merchandize. How do you beat Doraemon and Shonen Jump :p
 
D

Dio

Banned
Soriku said:
Those mechs don't build themselves you know.
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A giant mecha fighting tournament is what would get me really interested in the Olympics these days. Hell, you could even model it after G Gundam's country-specific robots.
 
H

hosannainexcelsis

Member
TheSeks said:
Shit. All of the venues have been over cost since the 1960's?! Why the hell would you bid for the event then!?
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There's always prestige that comes with hosting the Olympics, and cities hope that the revenue from tourism and the like will make the investment worth it in the long run.
 
L

Loxley

Member
TheSeks said:
Shit. All of the venues have been over cost since the 1960's?! Why the hell would you bid for the event then!?
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All of the world's media is focused on your country/city for two straight weeks, that kind of publicity can (theoretically) do a lot of good for a country's tourism income down the road.
 
A

Admiral Woofington

Member
out of curiosity what about countries that don't need to build the venues/already have the stadiums and only need to adapt them and just prepare for the olympics?
 
V

Valkerionseven

Member
Nyoro SF said:
So Japan doesn't have any existing infrastructure they can reuse and renovate? That sucks...
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They do, but par the course here and with all Olympics, they want to show off. Build a new modern stadium, faculties, and more just to show off for a few weeks to people who are not even seeing it.

The old stadium where they are making the new one was out of date, over sized and an eyesore, then they wanted to make an even bigger and uglier one which got a ton of hate. They also want to rebuild... Shibuya? station or one of the other large stations as part of their building cost. (Live in the south part of the country so not sure if its Shibuya or some other one. But after going two weeks ago, Shibuya needs an overhaul)

Other than that like the article said they want to move some events to locations in other cities. Which wont be an issue for athletes but all the fans who want to see would have to navigate that travel plan.
 
L

LiquidSolid

Member
I'm not surprised they're having a lot of issues, they had to change a lot of their 2019 Rugby World Cup hosting plans because they were so far behind schedule, but man, more than 4 TIMES as expensive as originally planned? That's insane.
 
P

ponpo

( ≖‿≖)
The olympics succccckkkk Tokyo is crowded enough as it is. Cancel it pls.

They'll make their money back from stuff people buy while here though, no doubt.
 
P

Piecake

Member
If the city where I lived ever decided to bid for the Olympic games I would protest. It is an absolute waste
 
L

liquidtmd

Banned
Every two years we seem to get a 'DAMN THIS OLYMPIC HOSTING IS SUPER OVERCOST AND EXPENSIVE' news flurry

No shit. Because contractors and officials are making a fucktonne of money behind the scenes.
 
T

Tagyhag

Member
That'd be an insane amount. The opening ceremony would be amazing.

Maybe they're hoping a bunch of people will want to stay and get the babies booming.
 
V

Valkerionseven

Member
They might save some money for the actual Olympics if they stopped producing all this Olympic 2020 shit already. You'd think it was effin next week with all the promotions they do for it here on TV and flyers/merch already.
 
W

walei

Member
I personally don't think city infrastructure improvement should be counted as Olympic hosting cost (new roads, railway etc) unless it's usable only during the Olympics.
 
U

Unknown Soldier

Member
Admiral Woofington said:
out of curiosity what about countries that don't need to build the venues/already have the stadiums and only need to adapt them and just prepare for the olympics?
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The US is probably the only country on Earth which could host a World Cup and both Olympics in the same year simply by reusing existing facilities but neither FIFA nor the IOC are going to do that because the bribes are better when you let everyone bid.
 
V

Vitten

Member
Hahaha.. were they actually expecting to stay within the projected budget ?? When has that ever happened ?

The Olympics can be such a waste of money. Rio has come and gone and nobody pretty much gives a shit anymore. All those million dollar venues can now decay in peace.
 
W

Wafflecakes

Member
danthefan said:
I don't know why anyone would want to host the Olympics anymore, I really don't.
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Plenty of first world countries make a profit on the games.

However, the IOC gets a hard on from bankrupting developing nations so they keep awarding them to countries who can't afford them.


Japan will be fine and will likely turn a profit.
 
O

olympia

Member
Aegus said:
Do the IOC actually pay anything towards this?
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kZmUpAh.gif


no
 
S

SoRuffShoNuff

Member
Atlanta made use of a lot of the facilities after the games left and the event completely transformed the trajectory of this city.

So no, the Olympics aren't always a burden.
 
K

KAP151

Member
30 billion.

Fucking hell.

I want to see some seriously good mechs vs. monster fights with that sort of dough.
 
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