Tokyo Olympics cost twice the initial estimate: Why?
TOKYO — Taxpayers beware: The cost of hosting an Olympics is likely to be far more than advertised.
The price tag on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics has ballooned to nearly twice the initial estimate, even after a major cost-cutting effort.
A major reason is that cities exclude large amounts of associated costs when they submit a bid to host the Olympics.
“Those numbers in the bidding file are almost fiction,” said Shinichi Ueyama, a Japanese public policy expert who led a Tokyo government investigation into the Olympics’ cost.