Speakers:

• Eva Marikova Leeds (Moravian University)
• Michael Leeds (Temple University)
• Isaac Gagné (German Institute for Japanese Studies)

Moderator:

• Kyle Cleveland, ICAS Co-Director

Overview:

Join us for an insightful double-header discussion on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the complex intersection of economics, infrastructure, and corporate sponsorship. Don't miss this unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the financial complexities behind one of the world’s biggest sporting events!

• Eva Marikova Leeds and Michael Leeds 
  Hosting the Olympics: Be Careful What You Wish For

The 2020 Games were delayed a year and brought no tourists, but they still generated a profit. The key is: for whom? One must distinguish among the IOC, the organizing committee, and the host city – which is often left holding the bag. Cities could gain from hosting the Olympics through infrastructure construction. Unfortunately, the focus is often on sports infrastructure, which is largely “empty calories” and requires costly maintenance after the Games. Tourism is also cited as a source of income, though the recent Paris Games brought a rise of only 1% in tourism in 2024 (versus a 7.3% gain in 2023).  Continuing a pattern of recent Games, the Tokyo Games were marked by massive cost overruns. Inflexible IOC demands, hard deadlines, and “the eternal beginner syndrome” are generally cited as reasons for such overruns.

• Isaac Gagné
  Money Games: The Making of the Corporate Sponsor Dream Team in the 2020 Tokyo Games

How did a bathroom chat lead to Panasonic becoming one of the first major Olympic sponsors? How did “passive patriotism” lead to competing companies become joint sponsors of the 2020 Olympics? This talk examines how the Japanese advertising company Dentsu pioneered the development of corporate sponsorship for the Olympics and how they played a key role in how the 2020 Tokyo Olympics generated the highest sponsorship revenues in Olympic history.

Speakers:

Eva Marikova Leeds

Professor of Economics at Moravian University

Eva Marikova Leeds obtained her Ph.D. from Princeton University. In 2007-09, she was associate professor at Temple University, Japan Campus. Her research has appeared in journals such as the Eastern Economic Journal, The Journal of Sports Economics, and Social Science Quarterly. With Michael Leeds, she coedited the Handbook on the Economics of Women’s Sports. She has written about the Tokyo Olympics and is currently researching the financing of stadiums in Nippon Professional Baseball. She is president-elect of the North American Association of Sports Economists.

Michael Leeds

Professor of Economics at Temple University

Michael Leeds holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. His research has appeared in such journals as The Journal of Urban Economics, Economic Inquiry, Social Science Quarterly, and The Journal of Sports Economics. He is coauthor of The Economics of Sports, the leading textbook in the field of sports economics, and coeditor with Eva Marikova Leeds of the Handbook on the Economics of Women in Sports. His current research focuses on gender differences in response to economic contests. From 2007 to 2009, he was an Assistant Dean at Temple University, Japan Campus.

Isaac Gagné

Principal Researcher at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ-Tokyo) and the Managing Editor of the interdisciplinary journal Contemporary Japan

Isaac Gagné is a cultural anthropologist with research interests in theories of moral economy, religious globalization, and the cultural industries. He co-edited Japan through the lens of the Tokyo Olympics with Barbara Holthus, Wolfram Manzenreiter, and Franz Waldenberger (Routledge, 2020), and his work has been published in Transcultural Psychiatry, Japan Review, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, and others.

Moderator:

Kyle Cleveland

ICAS Co-director

Kyle Cleveland is the co-director of ICAS and associate professor of Sociology at Temple University, Japan Campus. His expertise ranges from political and theoretical sociology to race and ethnicity, popular culture and ideology.

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