The Olympics, the most popular and well know event in the world. It is an event in which nearly half of the world’s population all come together and watch and holds the record for the single most watched sports event in history in the London 2012 Olympics where an astonishing 3.6 billion racked up to watch it. In 2020, Japan will be hosting the renowned Olympics for the second time since 1964. For my EPQ, I thought that I would be enthralling to do a question regarding Japan and how the Olympics will affect its economy in the state that it is now.

On September 7, 2013 at the IOC session in Buenos Aires, Tokyo won the bid to host their bid to host the Olympic games in 2020. Since then, I have seen the country renovate itself and how they can best sustainably develop the city. For Japan to develop, they had to develop new infrastructure and bring changes to the landscape, for this to happen there has been ongoing issues and debates on whether these procedures can be carried out and this thesis will discuss “How will the Olympics affect Japans economy?”

Why would a country what to host the Olympics? For tourism? For trade? Hosting the Olympic games means that the country must spend billions of dollars’ worth of investment, hoping in return you cause a shift in demand for tourism on a long run basis. However, the revenue earned just by these might not counterbalance what the country paid to prepare for the Olympics. When we talk about an impact of a mega event, it can be divided into three different categories: the social impact of an event, this means improving the ties and opportunities for the host community. Political impact, how the event affects the country politically e.g. improving the national image or public exposure. Economic impact, how the tourists and spending because of the Olympics affect the nations economy?