The Tokyo 2020 Olympics have generated record domestic sponsorship revenues of more than $3.0bn, the International Olympic Committee said yesterday — three times more than any previous summer Games.
There is huge enthusiasm among the Japanese for the Tokyo Games, and the public have rushed in their millions to buy tickets.
The IOC’s Co-ordination Commission chief for Tokyo, John Coates, said local sponsorship agreements were up to 62 companies for all three tiers of sponsorship arrangements.
“This equates to revenues exceeding 3.0bn dollars from national partnerships. That is an amazing amount of money,” Coates told the IOC session.
“This does not include the partnerships with (Japanese companies) Toyota, Bridgestone and Panasonic and their contribution to the TOP programme.”
The three companies have separate deals with the IOC as major sponsors of the organisation, worth hundreds of millions of dollars in total.
In comparison, the London 2012 Games raised roughly $1.1bn from domestic sponsors — a record at the time — while Rio de Janeiro in 2016 claimed it had slightly surpassed London, although that is unlikely with final accounts inaccurate given ongoing corruption probes linked to those Olympics.
The IOC has been struggling to attract new cities to bid for the Games and awarded the 2026 winter Olympics on Monday to Milan and Cortina D’Ampezzo after four other cities dropped out and Stockholm was left as the only other bidder. But in Japan, the Games have generated great enthusiasm with 7.5mn citizens registering to apply for tickets through a lottery system, many of whom ended up without any.
Tokyo’s bid file had said some 7.8mn tickets would be available for Games but 20-30% of those are reserved for international customers and sponsors.
“7.5mn ticket (requests). This is an indication of this strong support and high level of interest among the Japanese public,” Coates said.
nThe 2028 Summer Games will see host city Los Angeles record a profit of at least $1bn, mayor Eric Garcetti told a sports summit yesterday.
Garcetti said utilising the city’s existing sports venues would keep costs down while ticket and sponsorship sales would top current projections to help Los Angeles avoid the pitfalls that have left some other host cities in debt.
“We made a million dollars in 1932, we made $250mn in 1984,” he said, referring to the last two times the city has hosted the Games.
“I think we will make at least a billion dollars in 2028.”
Garcetti said the money would help support youth sports in the city “for decades to come.”
“We’ve had cities scared to bid for the Olympics because they cost so much and because people build so much infrastructure for two and a half weeks. “It wasn’t a very sustainable model... we created a different model.”
Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the LA Sports Summit, Garcetti also said that seeing the deals Tokyo 2020 organisers had been able sign for sponsorships for next year’s Games had made him even more bullish on his city’s prospects.
“When I look at what other cities have been able to do in terms of sponsorships, we should be able to blow way past the guaranteed level that we’re budgeting with,” he said.
“I think our ticket sales will do that as well.”
Garcetti’s comments came on the same day the Los Angeles Sports Council released an ‘Economic Impact Analysis of the Sports Industry in the Greater Los Angeles Region’.
The report found that last year alone the sports industry generated $6.3bn in economic impact, $327mn in taxes for state and local governments while supporting nearly 40,000 jobs.
Los Angeles is home to 11 professional sports franchises and will next year open a multi-billion dollar NFL stadium in Inglewood, one of the venues that will host events in 2028.
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