TOKYO (AP) – One thing is certain: Tokyo organizers want to somehow simplify next year’s postponed Olympics to keep costs down.
Estimates in Japan say the delay alone could cost $2 billion to $6 billion, most of which will be absorbed by Japanese taxpayers.
But how to do it and where to cut or reduce is still unclear. And there’s unlikely to be anything concrete until the fall, when organizers hope that science will better understand the coronavirus pandemic and measures Tokyo needs to take against it.
“We together with the IOC, we have begun to review the service levels that we originally planned for,” Toshiro Muto, the CEO of the organizing committee, said Wednesday in Tokyo after an online meeting with the International Olympic Committee executive board in Switzerland. “We are in the process of identifying more than 200 items that simplification could exist.”
As he has done for 2 1/2 months since the Olympics were postponed, Muto offered nothing concrete and no examples of what might be downsized.