A U.S. economist with a focus on the sports business says the International Olympic Committee should shoulder half of the additional cost of postponing the Tokyo Games due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, said picking up half the tab would be consistent with the IOC's responsibilities as an organizer of the games.

While the IOC has agreed to allocate an extra $650 million for the postponed games, the additional cost is expected to run into several hundreds of billions of yen, forcing the IOC and the local organizers to simplify the games to ease the financial impact.