Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020 to receive additional $210 million from sponsors

Tokyo Olympic officials said Thursday they have reached a "basic agreement" with all 68 domestic sponsors to extend their contracts into next year to support the postponed Games. Yoshiro Mori, the president of the organising committee, said at an on-line briefing that the new contributions "will exceed" 22 billion yen, or about $210 million, to patch up holes in the growing budget. Japanese domestic sponsors had already contributed a record of $3.3 billion to the local operating budget, and the new money pushes the total past $3.5 billion. This is at least twice — perhaps three times — as large as any previous Olympics and is driven by Dentsu Inc,, the giant Japanese advertising company that is also the marketing agent for the Tokyo Games. Dentsu conducted the negotiations, but both Mori insisted that none of the sponsors were pushed to extend their deals to support the growing costs of the Tokyo Olympics. Tokyo Olympic organisers announced earlier this week that their new budget, swollen by the postponement and the cost of holding the Olympics during a pandemic, had increased by $2.8 billion, pushing the official cost to $15.4 billion. The University of Oxford said in a study four months ago that Tokyo is the most expensive Summer Olympics on record.