It came as no great surprise to hear the news that the Tokyo Olympics will finally be held without spectator attendance in the stadiums. The state of emergency due to the coronavirus has continued to spread in the Japanese capital, as well as in three other major prefectures, and cases seem to be on the rise.
Obviously the details of the negotiations between the Japanese government and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for this difficult decision will not be made public, but it seems clear that it was a decision of compromise between the two sides, with the former wanting to be free of the yoke of having to organise the Olympic Games for good, while the latter saw no other possibility than for the Games to go ahead at all costs.
Current polls in Japan show that almost 70% of the population do not want the Olympics to take place, but the Japanese government has long insisted that there was no doubt that the Olympics would be held and would be safe. However, it was only a matter of time, especially with the escalation in COVID 19 infections, before the government bowed to public pressure and tried to reassure the public that the Olympics would not come before the health and safety of the country, while acknowledging that it was not up to them but to the IOC to decide whether or not to cancel the Games. It was a long time ago, as long ago as last summer (when the Games should have been organised), that Japan wanted to disassociate itself from its commitment as host city/country. In Tokyo they were clear about the business maxim that the best business is to get out of a bad business as soon as possible. The problem is that only the IOC has the power to cancel the games, so imagine how onerous the contract between the Olympic body and the host city could be.
Forced to move on and without plan 'B'
And while health and safety issues on both sides of the negotiating table were being discussed over greyhounds and hounds, the July date of no return was approaching. In the end, the Japanese government was left with no choice but to go ahead with the Games, but with a programme reduced to the absolute minimum, the most striking part of which would be the absence of the public.
While it is a rather disheartening sight to see the stands empty at any competition, it might be thought that mass television viewing could mitigate the economic disaster. Massive global audiences would both satisfy IOC sponsors and remind us of the wonders of the great country of Japan this summer. However, if the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that sport without a live audience generally leads to a disengagement effect.
Although logic initially suggested that the lack of being able to attend sporting events in person would lead to an increase in television consumption, the reality has shown that not only has this not happened, but that the drops in television viewing that have been occurring for some time now have, if anything, been accentuated. For example, last year's NBA play-offs, which were held with no spectators in the stadiums, saw a 50% drop in television viewing compared to the previous year. Another example is the all-powerful Champions League football, which has also suffered a significant drop in TV viewing, due to the combined effect of not being able to watch in public places such as bars and restaurants because of restrictions, family uncertainties in times of pandemic that invite to eliminate superfluous expenses such as subscriptions to pay-per-view platforms, and fundamentally, because of the disengagement effect that not being able to attend live sporting events has on sports fans. Sports are simply not the same to watch on TV when there is no one there to watch it in person.
Who cares, some would say, that TV audiences are falling if people are watching on a smartphone or tablet instead of a TV? The problem with this theory is that we don't actually know how many people are following the sport on the new platforms and you have to take a kind of leap of faith with the broadcast rights holders. It is certainly going to be interesting to see whether all those free-to-air or broadcasting companies are actually following the sport on the new platforms. pay per view who paid a fortune to the IOC for the broadcasting rights will get a return on their investment, because if the current trend is anything to go by, this is not likely to be the case.
Japan and Tokyo the big losers
However, the big losers in this whole situation would be Japan and the city of Tokyo, because beyond the economic hole of a budget that has shot up to 26 billion dollars, compared to the initial 12 billion, a wonderful opportunity has been lost to make a virtue out of necessity and to have turned this atypical edition of the Olympic Games into the first truly virtual/digital Olympics in history.
This is all the more a crime, considering that Japan has historically been a country at the forefront of technology, and yet the government has been more concerned to see if it could get rid of the heavy burden of holding the Games than to prepare a plan "B" that would allow a different experience of the Games for all sports fans around the world. To have achieved this, it should have got down to work a year ago, precisely when it was decided to postpone the Games, as it was not too difficult to envisage a complex scenario in terms of restrictions on the movement of people.
The savvy sponsors will undoubtedly surprise us with innovative digital activations of their sponsorships, but there is much that could have been done by the organising committee to digitise the Olympic experience from top to bottom. Of course there is a lot that can be done with technological boasts such as augmented reality, but sometimes there is something as simple as coordinated action with the athletes through their own social media channels that cannot be done now due to lack of time.
The Dakar Rally is a good example of this opportunity, as the impressive numbers obtained by this competition on social networks are largely due to the sum of all the content generated by the participants of the event themselves. The organisers, aware of this potential, unlike other promoters, not only do not make it difficult for them to film, photograph or make streaming from their 'home turf', but often even helps them by providing them with images generated by the organisation itself to feed their channels.
Imagine if, in a coordinated plan with the federations of each country, the organising committee provided technological facilities and content to the athletes, so that they could send their experiences to their followers. The impact that great global sports figures such as John Rahm can generate through their social networks regarding their Olympic participation is enormous, but let's not forget that each of these more than 11,000 participating athletes also have their own community of followers. In the end, the sum of all of them could undoubtedly mean such spectacular broadcasting numbers as to compensate for the predictably low television audiences, as well as the absence of the public at the competitions. A missed opportunity that will have to wait for a better occasion.
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