Coronavirus: A Spreading Concern

The disease has caused more than 2,800 deaths, most in Asia, but the Games are still scheduled to start in Tokyo this July.ap images

Last Tuesday in Japan, a rumor spread quickly throughout the sports marketing business: Someone was sick with the coronavirus at Dentsu, the all-powerful advertising agency with scores of clients across Tokyo 2020’s expansive advertising and sponsorship program.

By the close of business that day, media reports had confirmed that more than 5,000 Dentsu headquarters employees were ordered to telecommute until further notice. The virus is responsible for more than 3,400 deaths — more than 3,000 in China alone — as of early March. The news sparked a fresh round of fears that the Olympics themselves are in jeopardy, with dozens of sporting events across the continent having already been canceled and signs that the disease was sweeping across the globe.

With less than five months until the Games are scheduled to open in July, sponsors, broadcasters and their advisory firms are waiting uneasily and hoping for medical progress, multiple sources said. But there is also growing anxiety, because nobody is quite sure what a contingency plan would be.

“I think people are a little scared to start thinking through the implications of it,” said one Olympics consultant working in Tokyo, asking for anonymity due to the sensitivity. “We’re in a bit of a holding pattern. Everyone’s trying to figure out if it’s going to get worse before it gets better, or if it gets worse before it gets worse.”

The sense of emerging crisis grew further on Thursday, when Japanese authorities said public schools would be closed for most of March. And while the opening ceremony isn’t until July 24, the torch relay, a hallmark tradition of the Games, is scheduled to start in Fukushima on March 26 and make 47 stops across the country. Sponsors Coca-Cola, Toyota, Nippon Life and NTT Communications have spent millions to activate against it. Tokyo 2020 organizers must decide if it will go on as planned.

International travel to the Games, scheduled to end Aug. 9, has already been affected by the coronavirus scare, said one high-level Olympics sponsor executive. Even if the threat dissipates, leisure travelers are deciding now whether to go, and further international ticket sales scheduled to start in May will probably fall short of expectations.

Despite the rising concerns of the disease, any possibility of moving, delaying or canceling the Games is highly improbable at this point. Official word from Tokyo and IOC headquarters is that it’s all systems go right now, and the disease would have to spread much farther than it has for those options to be in play. No other city is in position to step in on such short notice, a delay would not work because of broadcast schedules and accommodation availability, and canceling would cost the sponsors and numerous stakeholders billions of dollars.

The only time the Games have been canceled since the birth of the modern Olympics was during World War II.

But unlike past “crises” that always emerge in the months before the Olympics, only to be minor problems in hindsight — such as terrorism in Sochi, Zika virus in Rio,  or North Korean warmongering in Pyeongchang — Olympics veterans see a potential for a serious problem in Tokyo that was underscored by the Dentsu shutdown.

The stakes are immense. Sixty-six companies have paid more than $3.1 billion for domestic rights to Tokyo 2020, and another 14 global Olympics sponsors have eyed Tokyo as a uniquely valuable Games since it was awarded to Japan in 2013. The biggest of them, such as Toyota and China-based Alibaba, will spend more than $100 million on promotional activities and corporate guest hospitality.

Companies have about three months to make big changes to their plans, several sources said. That puts them in line with the time frame for a decision on the Olympics themselves, according to Canadian IOC member Dick Pound last Tuesday.

For now, sponsors are relying on guidance from the IOC, the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee and the World Health Organization. In some cases, sponsors’ internal Olympics working groups have begun receiving briefings from their security and procurement teams that track factors that could disrupt regular business.

Even if the Games themselves can take place as scheduled, travel bans and event cancellations are already causing problems for Olympic qualifying.

Many countries, including the U.S. in a number of sports, determine who makes their Olympic teams through a point system, awarded based on performance in a series of international competitions. China plays an outsized role in hosting many of those events, and athletes could also be prevented from leaving China to attend competitions elsewhere.

Rick Adams, chief of sport performance and national governing body services at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, has asked for information from every U.S. national governing body, hoping to gauge the full scope of the problem. Sports that have singular trials competitions closer to the Games, such as track and field, swimming and gymnastics, are less likely to be affected.

“The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] currently recommends no nonessential travel to China and we at the USOPC are fully supporting that recommendation as it relates to all Team USA athletes, as well as NGB and USOPC staff,” Adams wrote in a Jan. 30 email. “This guidance will remain in place until future notice. … We anticipate further event cancellations over the coming weeks, so please work with your respective International Federations, event organizers, high performance teams and athletes on necessary contingency plans.”

Last Tuesday, the USOPC issued new guidance that emphasized the still-emerging nature of the risk. “We don’t yet know the full impact of the new developments on Team USA athletes and staff,” read the letter from Adams and Chief Security Officer Nicole Deal. “We have seen a significant increase in precautionary positions taken in both Japan and Korea over the past three days — along with confirmations of additional outbreaks in Italy and Iran,” the letter continues.

For now, U.S. Olympic athletes have been told to follow the CDC guidance against nonessential travel to China and South Korea. In regard to the Summer Olympics, USOPC staff said they continue to prepare “in earnest” for the Games and said, “We will take every precautionary measure necessary to keep Team USA athletes and staff safe during the Games.”

It’s already clear from the work restrictions spreading across China that this won’t be the last time an Olympics faces this global health concern. As Pound told the Associated Press, “This is the new war, and you’re going to have to face it.”

Indeed, the next front in the IOC’s battle against the coronavirus is already open: the 2022 Winter Olympics are set for Beijing. 

Editor’s note: This story is updated from the print edition.