Tokyo will not benefit long term from hosting the 2020 Olympics — contrary to the hopes and prayers of a nation — sports economist Andrew Zimbalist said Wednesday.

"I'd be really surprised," Smith College professor Zimbalist said at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, when asked if the Tokyo Games would be a success. "You don't have any of the ingredients for that."

"At the end of (the) day, the best way to have a good experience with hosting the Olympics is to not host them. And if you are going to host the Olympics, then what's really necessary is to do what Barcelona did and not what virtually every other city does."