Will the Tokyo Olympics Happen?

Will the Tokyo 2021 Olympics happen?

It's hard to believe we are eight months away from when the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games are scheduled to start. But will they actually happen? How do we know? Let me try to explain.

1. Tokyo Olympic gymnastics venue successfully holds first competition: This past week at the Olympic gymnastics venue for the Tokyo 2021 Games, we saw the successful execution of an international competition. Thirty athletes from Japan, the United States, Russia and China competed in this test run competition. According to a report by Reuters there were even fans allowed in the venue as spectators. It appears the competition was a success and we can expect more Olympic venues to run test competitions. This shows that the IOC has every intention of moving forward with hosting the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

2. Advertisers are returning to sports: We are seeing large advertisers returning to sports and continuing to invest in sports and media rights deals. Eventually this will trickle down to the athlete sponsorship level but we won't see those announcements until probably mid-2021. As we get more certainty around how the Olympics will be executed, we will see more of the traditional athlete sponsorship deals coming back around. An interesting opportunity opening up is with team deals and more agencies negotiating the sponsorship rights for sports teams with a larger marketing footprint.

3. Olympic Trials events will be very tricky: The real question to me is will each country be able to pull off their respective Olympic Team Trials events successfully. This is going to have a wide spread and my guess is it will look very different than it has in the past. Now, a COVID-19 vaccine could play into this but we just don't know right now

I will continue to share more Tokyo 2021 insights and thoughts as things develop. Thank you!