Sapporo Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto will meet with the Japanese Olympic Committee on Wednesday to request that the city’s bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics and Paralympics be changed to 2034 or later.
City officials confirmed the meeting to The Japan Times on Friday, but did not provide further details.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said Friday morning that he was aware of reports about scrapping the 2030 bid.
“It's important to obtain the support of the citizens of Sapporo, the people of Hokkaido and the general public in order to bid for the 2030 Winter Olympic Games. We're aware that Sapporo and the JOC are currently discussing how to proceed,” he said.
The idea of delaying the bid had previously been discussed. In June, just before Sweden put its hand up to host the 2030 Games, the JOC said that while it continued to recognize Sapporo as Japan’s 2030 candidate, it would also back the city if it decided to change its bid to 2034 or beyond.
The 2030 bid has never enjoyed strong public support locally despite Akimoto pushing for it. A Hokkaido Shimbun exit poll on April’s election, when Akimoto was re-elected, showed 60% of Sapporo voters opposed to the bid, while a Jiji Press exit poll at the same time indicated that 53% were opposed.
Cost overruns for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, as well as bid-rigging scandals involving senior officials on the Tokyo organizing committee that came to light in 2022, are among the reasons for the lack of enthusiasm. The Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, originally estimated at ¥734 billion ($6.67 billion), ended up costing about ¥1.7 trillion.
More recently, worries have been growing that the final cost of the 2030 Winter Games — currently estimated at between ¥280 billion and ¥300 billion — could increase due to a spike in construction material costs and a shortage of labor. In this regard, the 2025 Osaka-Kansai Japan Expo appears to be a cautionary tale: The original construction costs were estimated at ¥125 billion when Osaka won the bid in 2018, but rose to ¥185 billion two years later, and now stand at ¥230 billion.
“It's difficult to predict how long price hikes (in materials) and labor shortages will continue. But prices have been rising quite rapidly, and redevelopment projects in the heart of Sapporo are also under scrutiny,” Akimoto told reporters on Tuesday.
In addition to Sweden, France, which is hosting the 2024 Summer Games, is pushing a bid for the 2030 Winter Games in Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur.
In the U.S., Salt Lake City has indicated that it prefers to bid for the 2034 Winter Games due to the 2028 Summer Games taking place in Los Angeles. Unlike in Sapporo, however, public support in Salt Lake City for the Olympics is high. A local media poll earlier this year showed that 80% of respondents in the state of Utah supported another bid for the Winter Olympics. Salt Lake City hosted the Games in 2002.
The International Olympic Committee is expected to announce the 2030 host by the time the 2024 Games open in Paris in late July.
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