Tokyo 2020: Cost of doing business

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) paid just over $17 million (£13.5 million/€15.8 million) to buy cancellation insurance for the postponed Tokyo 2020 Games.

This amounts to an increase of 18 per cent over the $14.38 million (£11.4 million/€13.4 million) the IOC paid for similar protection for the previous Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

This was a much smaller quadrennium-on-quadrennium jump than the Lausanne-based body faced for insuring the Winter Games.

Whereas the premium paid to cover for the Sochi Winter Games in Russia in 2014 was $7.565 million (£6 million/€7 million), the rate paid for coverage for Pyeongchang 2018 leapt by 69 per cent to $12.8 million (£10.15 million/€11.9 million).

The build-up to the 2018 event coincided with a period of heightened geopolitical tensions in and around the Korean peninsula.

The Tokyo fee brings to just under $30 million (£23.8 million/€28 million), the sum spent by the IOC on cancellation insurance during the COVID-impacted 2017-2021 Olympic cycle. – Full report