The Tokyo Olympics were very expensive

Organizing committee officials, who met on Tuesday before the body disbanded at the end of the month, released the final numbers, which were boosted by the pandemic but were in an all-time high long before that.

Holy Cross College sports economist Victor Matheson and fellow American Robert Baade researched Olympic costs and benefits in a study.

They write that the damning conclusion is that, in most cases, the Olympics are a money-losing proposition for the host cities. They only lead to positive net benefits in very specific and unusual circumstances.

Accurate tracking of Olympic costs, ie who pays, who benefits and what are and are not Games expenses, is a moving maze.

Organizers estimated the official costs when the Games closed a year ago at US$15.4 billion.

Four months later, they said the costs had fallen to 13.6 billion. They explained that there was a big saving because no spectators were allowed to attend, which reduced costs for security, venue maintenance, etc.

However, organizers lost at least US$800 million in revenue due to no ticket sales, which the Tokyo Metropolitan Government had to cover.

A 2020 Oxford University study claimed that the Tokyo Olympics would be the most expensive ever.

More than half of the costs were paid for by public money, including the Tokyo government, the national government and other government entities.

In the few years leading up to the Olympics, government audits revealed that official costs might have been twice as high as expected. This means that the public part of the bill could be well over half.

In its annual report, the IOC indicates a contribution of approximately 1.9 billion US dollars to cover the costs of Tokyo.

It is impossible to assess the long-term impact of the Tokyo Olympics, especially in a sprawling city like the Japanese capital where change is constant.