Originally Posted by
hailstorm
It's not about optics. They don't have the luxury to worry about such optics. It's about the economy. In that regard, local spectators, that buy tickets and later go out and spend money, are better than no spectators.
And everything else here already has spectators anyway. Baseball games, sumo matches, wrestling shows, Takarazuka (a RIZIN show is going on as I type this). Would seem strange to not have them at the Olympics that they've spent so much money on.
Baseball, J-League, sumo are all different in that those are all local events with Japanese making up vast majority of athletes and >95% of spectators (except sumo) traditionally. So there's no need to expressly ban foreign residents from those events, no controversies necessarily. Olympics run on a completely different premise.
They had 5 choices: 1. full-version (but with lottery to eliminate some % of ticketholders to limit crowd) with loosening of public health restrictions on foreign ticketholders; 2. full-version but all foreign ticketholders subject to standard Covid entry/quarantine restrictions; 3. Japanese ticketholders only; 4. No spectators; 5. No Games.
(1) seems too risky and irresponsible.
(2) seems to put unfair amounts of burden and uncertainty on too many people.
(3) bad optics - if they want to do it, fine. but foreign ticketholders being banned will be a legacy of the Tokyo Olympics.
(4) some not so insignificant revenue loss, not ideal; but Tokyo leaves a less controversial legacy than (3) imo,
(5) revenue loss is too huge, not to mention you're ruining athletes' opportunities.
There's no right/wrong here. Many people probably won't care. But if you ask me, (3) is poor form, (4) is the least bad choice. I guess it would've been better if IOC had decided it, but it seems this was Jpn's decision.