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Ten years ago, in May 2011, Adele’s Rolling in the Deep was topping the Billboard charts,
the first season of Games of Thrones was on its way to becoming a television phenomenon,
Osama Bin Laden had just been killed by US Navy Seals, and the International Olympic
Committee was sending letters to National Olympic Committees soliciting bids to host
the 32nd running of the Summer Olympic Games.
This moment marked the start of a decade long process of planning and preparation all leading
up to a mere 16 days of international sporting competition.
Step two was this: one month later, the governor of Tokyo, Japan announced his city’s intention
to submit a bid—in large part to mark their recovery from the massive, 20,000 death earthquake
that had devastated the country mere months before.
Soon enough, Madrid, Istanbul, Baku, and Doha each submitted bids as well but, in the end,
after a two year evaluation process, a contract was signed between the International Olympic
Committee, the Japanese Olympic committee, and the City of Tokyo in September, 2013—Tokyo
would host the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.
For an event of this scale—tens of thousands of athletes, millions of spectators, and billions
of television viewers—a mere seven year planning period, believe it or not, leaves
no time to waste.
The most watched television broadcast in existence needs to be planned; a whole village needs
to be constructed; dozens of stadiums and venues need to be built, refurbished, or adapted;
and one of the world’s largest cities needs to plan for what might be the busiest three
weeks of its existence.
To complete this task, Tokyo was given this: the Host City Contract - Operational Requirements
document.
Across its 273 pages, this outlines, in incredible detail, what the International Olympic Committee,
or IOC, requires from its contractual partner, Tokyo, in order complete the Olympics successfully
and, crucially, consistently with all past and future Games.
Its essentially the bible for Olympic organizers.
The 2015 edition, made for the 2020 Games—now being held in 2021—outlines some absolutely
minuscule details.
For example, Tokyo had to install weather stations at the sites of all outdoor competition
venues three years prior to the start of the Games in order to collect long-term data to
be used by the IOC to inform their scheduling of events.
The document also establishes some basic but far reaching guidelines, such as the fact
that the Olympics will last 16 days, except for a certain number of preliminary competitions
that, subject to IOC approval, can be held prior to the opening ceremony.
It also, in a matter of mere paragraphs, outlines massive asks, such as the necessity for Tokyo
to book 41,177 hotel rooms for the media, marketing partners, future host city representatives,
IOC executives, National Olympic Committee representatives, International Sport Federation
representatives, and more.
This is equivalent to close to half of all of Tokyo’s hotel rooms, and it only represents
the accommodation requirements for those actually running the games—not those competing or
spectating.
The hotel capacity crunch was such an issue, in fact, that prior to the prohibition of
international spectators due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the city had planned to dock cruise
ships in Tokyo Bay to serve as additional, temporary hotels.
Athletes, however, do not stay in hotels.
Since the 1932 Los Angeles Games, each host city constructs a dedicated Olympics Village
to house athletes—far away from the crowds of fans and hoards of media.
Now, the IOC’s operational requirements set strict standards to assure that, for the
most part, the 2012 village is just like the 2020 village, for all practical purposes.
For example, it has to be within 50 kilometers, 31 miles, or a 60 minute drive of all venues
so, if any event takes place further from the main host city, an additional village
is constructed.
This is especially relevant for the Winter Games, with which indoor sports often happen
within the main host city, but outdoor events happen further away at mountain resorts.
For example, in the case of the 2014 games, a primary village was constructed in Sochi,
while an additional one was set up at the Rosa Khutor ski resort where snowsports events
took place.
For the summer games in Tokyo, however, just one village was constructed, and the Operational
Requirements dictated that it must have the capacity for 16,000 people, so it operates
at the scale of a small town.
The requirements also dictate that rooms must be at least 97 square feet or 9 square meters
in size, or 129 square feet or 12 square meters with double rooms, and even outline their
required contents.
In addition, the village must have an Olympics merchandise store, a bank, photo store, hair
salon, florist, dry cleaning shop, travel agent, post office, and more.
Typically, McDonalds also sets up a temporary restaurant in the village for the games, which
is like any McDonalds except that its menu has no prices—the company provides athletes
with food for free in exchange for the publicity it inevitably attracts.
Lastly, according to the operational requirements document, the village even must have a designated
place of mourning.
Now, constructing brand new dedicated venues, such as the village, for the purposes of a
16-day event quite obviously presents problems.
While in decades past cities were essentially willing to throw any amount of money at the
Games—and sometimes run at hundreds of percents over budget—due to a belief that the publicity
they attracted was invaluable, taxpayers, and therefore governments, are increasingly
skeptical of the value that the Games truly provides for a city and country.
There are plenty of horror stories of places like Turin, Italy, the host of the 2006 Games,
whose village now sits derelict and is inhabited by squatters—essentially a complete waste
of money from the perspective of the city and, therefore, its taxpayers.
There are also, however, cases like that of Sydney, which redeveloped its Olympic Park
into a true neighborhood.
It’s now home to upscale hotels, restaurants, and housing complexes, and hosts nearly 6,000
events both large and small each year.
Altogether, having seen the horror stories, the Olympics are becoming less attractive
for cities.
In decades past, plenty of cities would bid to host each Olympics, but now there are situations
like Paris 2024 or Los Angeles 2028 where cities are awarded the Games effectively by
default—having faced zero competition in the bidding process.
For those that do host the games, though, cost-consciousness has increased dramatically
and they’re now trying to craft their venue strategy closer to that of Sydney, rather
than Turin.
In Tokyo, three categories of Olympic venues are being used.
The first is temporary.
With certain events, such as canoeing, climbing, beach volleyball, or sailing, there’s little
prospect that the city can redevelop the venue into something self-sustaining after the games,
so they either set up spectator and media facilities at existing sporting facilities
that just lack the scale to host an Olympic event, or they set up an entirely new, temporary
venue.
For more popular sports that require less specialized facilities, however, Tokyo is
using pre-existing venues around the city.
For example, with Table Tennis, which requires little infrastructure, the Tokyo Metropolitan
Gymnasium is being used—just as it was during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics for Gymnastics.
With certain events, however, the Tokyo organizers believed it was actually worth it to build
a brand new venue.
Swimming and diving events, for example, will happen at the brand-new Olympics Aquatics
Center.
This is often the case at summer games.
Swimming and diving are typically some of the most watched sports at the Olympics, despite
mediocre popularity as a spectator sport outside of the games.
That means cities often lack aquatics venues with the scale necessary for Olympic events,
so this is one of the venues more often built as new.
At the 2016 Rio de Janeiro games, a temporary aquatics stadium was built, while at London
2012, Beijing 2008, Sydney 2000, and plenty more, new, permanent facilities were created.
Now, with each of these new, permanent venues, the Bureau of Olympic and Paralympic Games
Tokyo 2020 Preparation had to justify their long-term value beyond the games to the government
and public.
Therefore, they released this document.
It outlines the core of their development strategy: they want to create not only effective
venues, but an appealing neighborhood, certainly following the model of Sydney 2000, so that
they can consider any money spent an investment, rather than a cost.
With each of these new venues, such as the new Olympic Aquatics Centre, for example,
they’re published a detailed post-games plan.
Through redeveloping the venue into both a long-term competition venue and a community
recreation center, the Bureau believes they can attract a million visitors per year after
the games, and while they project the facility to run at a loss, its one small enough to
be comparable with other similar public recreation centers created outside of the context of
the Olympics.
Some of the other venues, such as the Ariake Arena, to be used for Volleyball, are expected
to turn a profit after the games so, altogether, if projections are accurate, these new venues
won’t be a long-term financial burden to the city and its taxpayers.
Now, of course, like with anything regarding the Olympics, each of the 42 venues need to
follow a sprawling set of strict standards.
For example, they each need to have the Olympics flag and respective International Sporting
Federation flag flying in a conspicuous spot.
They need to have a full backup power system for all broadcast, media, technology, sport,
and security operations, while their lighting systems must be split into two sections with
independent power supplies for each so that events can go on even through power failure.
In terms of the actual sporting facilities, however, these are each subject to the standards
of the respective IOC-recognized International Sports Federation.
For example, Olympic rowing is managed by the International Rowing Federation, which
recommends 531 feet or 162 meters of course width, and requires 2,162 meters or 7,126
feet of length.
Their standards get plenty more specific, though: they specify the intricacies of the
course buoy system; outline where advertising banners can go; detail the location, construction,
and operation of timing huts; and much, much more.
Each Olympic event is essentially the pinnacle of its sport, so the International Federations
are heavily involved.
Of course, the Olympics are a made-for-television event.
While millions of spectators do typically watch the Games in person, billions watch
on TV.
In fact, 73% of the Olympics total revenue comes from television rights alone.
They simply would not happen in their modern form if not for their massive television audience
so perhaps the most important facility of all is this: the International Broadcast Center.
In Tokyo, this facility is constructed in Tokyo Big Sight—the country’s largest
convention center—and is run by the Olympics Broadcasting Services, or OBS.
Now, for the longest time, broadcasting operations were something that the International Olympic
Committee would contract out to a third party, but in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics,
OBS was established to act as the host broadcaster for all future Games.
Now, like with most large sporting events, you won’t see cameras from NBC, BBC, Eurosport,
and all the other national broadcasters that carry the events on TV actually at each event.
That’s because OBS is responsible for filming and producing each event, and then they provide
produced feeds to each broadcaster, who acts as their customer.
While NBC, for example, might have reporters and commenters at each event to augment the
OBS feeds, they don’t actually film the sporting events themselves.
Now, OBS is a standalone, independent company set up by the IOC to fulfill these broadcast
functions.
While typically it has some 166 employees, this balloons up to 8,100 during the Games—mostly
comprised of the operational staff filming and producing the television feeds.
Its ultimate task in Tokyo is to create 9,500 hours of content—more than with any prior
Olympic Games.
To accomplish this, it has deployed some 1,049 cameras and 3,600 microphones across Tokyo’s
42 venues.
These are cut together into produced “World Feeds” in dedicated broadcast compounds
at each venue before being delivered to here: the International Broadcast Center.
From one month before the games until its conclusion, this is a 24/7 operation and,
much like the Olympics Village, operates like a small town with restaurants, coffee shops,
bars, a medical center, bank, convenience store, dry cleaners, and even a massage room.
Many of OBS’ facilities at the International Broadcast Center deal with the technical aspects
of taking the World Feeds, of which as many as 64 are produced simultaneously in the case
of day two of the games, and disseminating these out to all the different rights holding
broadcasters around the world.
However, in addition to television production, much of the purpose of this facility is to
act as workspace for all the journalists from around the world who have travelled to the
Games.
During the Olympics, one of OBS’ main functions is essentially as a landlord.
They manage the International Broadcast Center and rent out space to different broadcasters
to serve as their workspaces.
A private office in the center comes in units of 270 square feet or 25 square meters, and
in the case of Tokyo, costs some $5,011 per unit for the duration of the games.
Of course, though, there are plenty of upcharges.
Even once a broadcaster has paid to rent a space, two normal wall plugs will cost them
$876, and the OBS rate card even includes the option to purchase a power strip for $27.
Meanwhile, getting a dedicated 100 Mbps ethernet plug, to provide more stable internet than
the free wifi, costs broadcasters $19,044.
OBS also sells broadcasters a digital data feed, giving real-time access to results,
schedules, medals, records, news, biographies, statistics, and more.
This is what ultimately gets repackaged into, for example, the real-time results you’ll
see on the NBC or the BBC websites.
Finally, OBS’ rate card includes options to outfit a broadcaster’s private office
with a printer for $356, a walkie talkie for $438, small folding table for $67, microwave
for $105, and electric kettle for $23.
With 6,000 accredited journalists awarded access to the Tokyo Games, its as much a job
to manage them as the athletes and, while procuring an electric kettle for an LA Times
sports writer might seem like a trivial task, it makes the journalists’ jobs easier and
doing so plays a tiny but present part in helping the Olympics run smoothly.
Now, ultimately, while there are plenty of big decisions required in planning the Olympics,
there are few small ones.
For the most part, the host cities’ jobs are just to follow an incredibly detailed
set of instructions.
The spend the better part of a decade doing exactly that, but the ultimate goal of the
2020 Games is to make an event that’s just as successful and runs largely the same as
the Games of 2016, 2012, 2008, or any year before.
The goal is consistency, and therefore the task, while enormous, is strictly prescribed.
That doesn’t mean it’s straightforward, though.
Every page of this document represents an incredible amount of work—a single line
might become an individual’s job for years—and then actually putting that together, combining
the tasks as small as placing the right flag in a venue with those as large as building
an entirely new stadium, is what makes for a truly successful and impressive event.
As anyone knows by now, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games are actually happening in 2021.
Of course, taking one of the world’s largest events and postponing it by a year mere months
before, after a decade of preparation, is an incredible feat.
I didn’t have time to cover that in this video, but for those interested, I made a
companion video about the subject and put it on Nebula.
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