Five years ahead of the Summer Olympics, Tokyo is already a winner – as of 2015, total sponsorship for the 2020 Games reached approx. $1.5 billion, setting an Olympics record. After some initial setbacks, the city is moving ahead with preparations for only the second Summer Olympic Games ever to be held in an city in Asia
Tokyo is to become the fifth city to host the Summer Olympic Games, and the first city in Asia to host them more than once. Prior to receiving the honour to host the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2020, Japan’s capital hosted the 1964 Summer Olympic Games. Tokyo was announced as the host city at the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires in Argentina, on 7th September 2013, beating of two other competitors in the form of Istanbul and Madrid.
The Tokyo games are set to run from 24th July to 9th August, with 28 sports to be included on the list. Tokyo will also be hosting the 2020 Summer Paralympics, from 25th August to 6th September 2020, with 22 sports represented.
The final list of sports to be included will be announced in August 2016. Under new IOC policies, the host organising committee can now propose the addition of sports to the programme—with a particular focus on adding sports that are popular in the host country. So far there were two proposals: on 22nd June 2015, eight sports were proposed: baseball/softball, bowling, karate, roller sports, sport climbing, squash, surfing, and wushu, while on 28th September 2015 the organisers proposed five sports – baseball/softball, karate, sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding – to the IOC for inclusion in 2020. The IOC recently announced that it is particularly pleased with the five sports Tokyo had chosen to present to the IOC for inclusion in the 2020 Summer Games because some of the chosen sports are particularly appealing to young people.
The Organising Committee is headed by former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, while Olympic and Paralympic Minister Toshiaki Endo is overseeing preparations on behalf of the Japanese government.
“The 1964 Tokyo Games completely transformed Japan, enhanced the Japanese people’s awareness of the outside world and helped bring about rapid growth for the Japanese economy. The 2020 Games will enable Japan, now a mature economy, to promote future change throughout the world, and leave a positive legacy for future generations.”
The quote above is an excerpt from “Connecting to Tomorrow,” one of three concepts governing the Games, while the two others are “Achieving Personal Best” and “Unity in Diversity”. The second relates to the organiser’s aim of preparing the event in such a manner that “every athlete can realise their best performance and achieve their personal best”, by using the world’s best technologies in developing competition venues and running the Games, so as to offer the best Japanese omotenashi, or hospitality.
The “Unity in Diversity” concept relates to the aim of accepting and respecting differences in race, colour, gender, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, level of ability or other status, thereby allowing peace to be maintained and society to continue to develop and flourish. Therefore, organisers say, The Tokyo 2020 Games will foster a welcoming environment and raise awareness of unity in diversity among the world’s citizens.
Opinion polls show that more than 90 per cent of the Japanese population supported Tokyo’s hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
By hosting the 2020 Tokyo Games, organisers hope to accelerate the recovery of Japan’s tsunami-affected area, to boost the economy through major construction works, proceeds from marketing, tourism and other activities, both before and after the Games.
The Tokyo 1964 Games completely transformed Japan, while the 2020 Games will enable Japan, now a mature economy, to promote future change throughout the world
Among the projects envisaged are not new sporting facilities, but also new capacities at both Haneda Airport and Narita Airport, new railway lines, the completion of the Central Circular Route, the Tokyo Gaikan Expressway and Ken-Ō Expressway, as well as the renovation of other major expressways in the area and many other projects.
Although some plans have been changing (such as the financing and design of the new Olympic Stadium, and a new logo) the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said in October that things are heading in the right direction. The stadium should be completed by January 2020. A second competition for the stadium design is set to be held later this year, with construction to start early next year and its completion scheduled for early 2020, a year later than originally planned. Zaha Hadid Architects, which came up with the initial design, has opted not to take part again after their proposal proved too expensive.
Japan has high ambitions when it comes to hi-tech being promoted during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Japan being reaffirmed as still being the world’s tech leader. One of those efforts is a self-driving taxi service that is currently under development. Tokyo-based Robot Taxi is to be tested for the first time next march. The company – a joint venture between DeNA (one of Japan’s mobile internet pioneers) and ZMP (a robotics firm; tagline “Robot of Everything”) – is not building its own cars from scratch, but rather adding driverless capabilities to existing vehicles.
Giants such as Honda Motor, Toyota Motor and Nissan Motor all announced plans to offer cars that can drive themselves on highways by around 2020, part of an attempt by Japanese automakers to move ahead of foreign rivals in this new high-tech field.
They are not alone. Cartivator, an automobile engineering group led by Nakamura, is moving forward with development of the SkyDrive, a flying car for personal use, which the group would like to show at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. The car is still very much a work in progress, but a prototype was on the show this year at the Infinity Ventures Summit, a high-profile gathering of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
Japan can say that it already achieved what it hoped for in one area, with total sponsorship for the 2020 Games has reached approx. $1.5 billion by 2015, setting an Olympics record, in contrast, for example, to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, which attracted only $1.3 billion. Worldwide Olympic Partners to date include: The Coca-Cola Company, Atos, Bridgestone, Dow Chemical Company, General Electric, McDonald’s, Omega SA, Panasonic, Procter & Gamble, Samsung Electronics, Toyota, Visa Inc. while Gold Partners include: Asahi Breweries, ASICS, Canon Inc., Fujitsu, JX Holdings, Mitsui Fudosan, Mizuho Financial Group, Nippon Life, NEC Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Nomura Holdings, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Tokio Marine Nichido.
In the United States, the 2020 Summer Olympics will be broadcast by NBC, as part of a US$4.38 billion agreement that began at the 2014 Winter Olympics. In Europe, these will be the first Summer Olympics under the IOC’s exclusive pan-European rights deal with Discovery Communications, which began at the 2018 Winter Olympics. The rights for the 2020 Games cover almost all of Europe, excluding Russia, as well as France and the United Kingdom, due to pre-existing rights deals that will expire following these Games, thus marking the BBC and France Télévisions’ final Olympics. Discovery will sub-license coverage to free-to-air networks in each territory.