The Olympics are a world wide event that is enjoyed by many people across the globe. Despite the Olympics being one of the biggest international events it has a chance of being cancelled due to the growing pandemic, the CoronaVirus or Covid 19. The Olympics haven’t been cancelled since the 1940s and that was for a war. Officials wonder if holding this event would be a good idea considering the CoronaVirus.

The 2020 Olympics were supposed to be held around July of last year in Tokyo. A Prime Minister of Japan (Shinzo Abe) said that The Olympics should be held as a beacon of hope in these desperate times, or to quote “to prove that humanity has been beaten the novel CoronaVirus.” Others oppose that they wouldn’t want to put their people and athletes in danger for the Olympics. BBC News says that “In July, Tokyo 2020 chief executive Toshiro Muto said it was possible that the Games be held to a “limited” audience, but said they wanted to avoid the possibility of having no spectators at all.” Other sports such as the NBA, MLS, MLB, and the NHL paused or postponed their seasons. Despite this the Japanese leader stated that the games will not be cancelled only postponed. Although The IOC said that the games will not be postponed any farther past 2021. Another difficulty that would come with the postponement would be travel. Due to all the travel restrictions it could be hard to get more than 11,000 athletes to the games and back.

A problem that Japan would be faced with if the games were cancelled would be all the money they would lose because of how much they spend on the games. The Olympics would cost around $12.6 billion plus more from the year delay due to the virus. Although not only Japan would be losing money over the postponing or maybe the cancellation of The Olympics. NBC News states that “NBC Universal, which is the parent company of NBC News, paid $4.4 billion for U.S media rights to the 4 Olympics from 2014 to 2020.”

No one really knows if The Olympics will be held or postponed again, but let’s hope that the CoronaVirus gets under control and the games can be held and bring joy to the people who love watching.