Tokyo Olympics 2020: Tournament surpasses $3.0 billion in domestic sponsorship revenues as companies continue to line up

Lausanne: The Tokyo 2020 Olympics have generated record domestic sponsorship revenues of more than $3.0 billion, the International Olympic Committee said on Tuesday — 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 Coordination 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 3.0 billion dollars from national partnerships. That is an amazing amount of money. This does not include the partnerships with (Japanese companies) Toyota, Bridgestone and Panasonic and their contribution to the TOP programme,” Coates told the IOC session.

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 $1.1 billion 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 7.5 million citizens registering to apply for tickets through a lottery system, many of whom ended up without any.

Tokyo’s bid file had said some 7.8 million tickets would be available for Games but 20-30 percent of those are reserved for international customers and sponsors.

“7.5 million ticket (requests). This is an indication of this strong support and high level of interest among the Japanese public,” Coates said.