For weeks, Olympic organisers have relentlessly pushed a consistent message: The Summer Games in Tokyo will not be cancelled or postponed.
“Cancellation or delay of the Games would be unacceptable for the athletes,” Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto said recently.
But behind the scenes, sponsors who have pumped billions of dollars into the Games have grown increasingly nervous about how the coronavirus outbreak will impact the tournament.
When organisers and sponsors met privately to discuss preparations last Wednesday, the companies learned there had been no decision on whether – or when – there would be any change to the Games.
“A lot of people are starting to worry, but there’s nothing much we can do,” a representative of an Olympic sponsor, who was present at the previously unreported meeting, told Reuters.
“If this continues into April, May, June, it will be an issue, but we’re still waiting to see what will happen,” added the representative, who was not authorised to speak to the media and declined to be identified.
The meetings between the Tokyo 2020 organising committee and “partner companies”, including sponsors, take place regularly. There were dozens of people present at the one last week.
“Nothing has been decided. On the inside, it’s a mess,” said a person briefed on the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The final decision belongs to the powerful International Olympic Committee chief, Thomas Bach. Companies such as Coca-Cola Co, Bridgestone Corp, Canon Inc, Toyota Motor Corp and Panasonic Corp sponsor the Games, and Japanese brands have for decades been some of the most generous.
The IOC said on Wednesday that “preparations for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 are continuing as planned”.
Tokyo 2020 Olympics chief Yoshiro Mori said his team was not considering changing plans for the games.
“It is our basic stance that we press ahead with preparation for a safe and secure Olympics,” Mori told reporters at a news conference.
The meeting last week brought into focus the scale of what organisers are grappling with: pressure to avoid a coronavirus crisis among 600,000 expected spectators and athletes at an event that could see $3 billion (€2.65bn) in sponsorships and at least $12 billion (€10.6bn) spent on preparations evaporate.
Haruyuki Takahashi, one of more than two dozen members of the board of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee, told Reuters it had just started working on scenarios for how the virus could affect the Games. But a sponsor representative at the meeting last week said those plans were not being shared with the companies.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has staked his legacy as the longest-serving Japanese leader on staging a successful Games and bringing a massive jolt, estimated at $2.3 billion (€2bn), to the stagnant economy with tourism and consumer spending.
Some Olympic qualifiers and test events have been relocated or delayed. The Games themselves don’t start until late July, leaving some time for the organisers to make the final call.
Neal Pilson, the former head of CBS Sports, who was involved in broadcasting rights negotiations for three Winter Olympics, said he expected organisers to assess the situation by early May at the latest, when they “will have a better fix on whether the epidemic is tapering down or continuing to expand”.
Olympic Minister Hashimoto said the end of May was a possible time-frame for a decision.
Organisers have begun to modify their tone. Tokyo 2020’s Mori, while vehemently denying the Games would be cancelled, added at the news conference: “I am not saying there won’t be any impact. I think there will be. On that, specialists in each field are looking into what to do.”
Last week, Hashimoto was questioned in parliament on a clause in the contract between the IOC and the organisers in Japan that determines when the Olympic committee could terminate the Games.
One of the scenarios is the inability of the host city to hold the Olympics in 2020.
The mention of the clause touched off speculation that the minister was hinting at a delay, which sponsors at last week’s meeting were told sparked the ire of the IOC.
As a result, Hashimoto called senior members of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee to explain how she was “misunderstood.”
According to the contract, the Tokyo metropolitan government, the Tokyo 2020 organising committee and the Japanese Olympic Committee signed away any right to indemnity, damages or compensation from the IOC.
The contract says the IOC may scrap the Games when safety is “seriously threatened”, among other reasons.
Those three bodies have formed a task-force on the virus that consults closely with the World Health Organisation, which last week warned against “false hopes” that the virus would disappear with warmer summer weather.
Many sports in Japan, such as rugby and sumo, have held recent matches without spectators.
Although keeping spectators away would cost an estimated $800 million (€706m) in lost ticket sales, it could still provide billions in revenue from broadcast and marketing rights.
But experts said it would still be difficult to organise a safe Games with thousands of athletes living in close proximity.
“In the Olympic village alone, you’re bringing together 17,000-18,000 people, they’re living in close quarters, interacting with each other, coming from all over the world,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College specialising in sports economics.
A Tokyo 2020 official involved in the discussions said that delaying the games until later in the year would be difficult.
Takahashi, of the organising committee, said a one- or two-year delay would better accommodate professional sports schedules, which are planned years in advance.
“We need to start preparing for any possibility. If the Games can’t be held in the summer, a delay of one or two years would be most feasible,” Takahashi said.
