Sapporo Gave Olympic Bid Up

The City of Sapporo decided to give up its candidacy to host the Winter Olympic Games in 2030. The series of corruptions over the Tokyo 2020 Olympics diminished the support for Sapporo’s bid. The city could not find any appropriate way to distribute the business opportunities related to the Olympic games other than relying on arbitral decisions by some authorized people. Sapporo’s stepping down indicate a fact that Japan cannot host any Olympic games as long as it does not establish a transparent business model.

Hokkaido Shimbun and some newspapers on Thursday reported that the Mayor of Sapporo, Katsuhiro Akimoto, made up his mind that Sapporo would retreat from 2030 Olympic bid and shift its focus to 2034. He thought that it would be difficult to remove the skepticisms of the people by the time International Olympic Committee would decide the host city as early as the end of this year. He will officially announce his decision on October 11th after the consultation with the president of Japan Olympic Committee Yasuhiro Yamashita.

 

Special Investigation Department of Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office in August 2022 arrested Haruyuki Takahashi, a council member of Tokyo Olympic Organization Committee, with suspicion of receiving money from an official sponsor Aoki Holdings. Other related hidden corruptions were revealed after the arrest. The people in Japan realized a distorted structure of the Olympic event, in which a few people exercised authoritative power in selecting companies to join the Olympic businesses.

 

Sapporo was the place where marathon race of Tokyo 2020 Games was taken place. IOC had a good impression on Sapporo to have Olympic games at the time. But the people in Sapporo became skeptical about the merit of having the games as the scandals of Tokyo consecutively came out. The host city has to pay for a certain amount of the cost, which is swelling with the inflation in international economy. Public opinion in Sapporo eventually became negative against the Olympic bid.

 

Although Sapporo still hopes to have the Winter Olympic Games in 2034, Salt Lake City of United States is regarded as the top runner for it. It is necessary for any city in Japan seeking Olympic bid to show the way to take place the event without any obscure contracts for collecting sponsors that find a major business chance in the Olympic games.

 

Here’s one structural problem. The national or local governments and business sectors still believe that the Olympic games contribute to salvage lagging local economy. That was true in the time of high economic growth of the post-war period. However, highly commercialized Olympic games poses a heavy burden on the host city. Without a fundamental reform, Olympic games may become an international sports event held in a limited number of rich countries which can afford to host it.

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