The opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games was originally slated for this Friday, July 24. That date was decided upon years ago - but by March 24 of this year the International Olympic Committee had bowed to the inevitable. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games will now take place in 2021.
As is now all too apparent, a global pandemic has knock-on effects at every level of every society. The Japanese government is already over ¥1 trillion (£7.5 billion) in the hole due to the Olympic postponement - and that number is only going one way between now and July 2021.
Every TV manufacturer, and every electronics retailer, knows there’s nothing like a big summer of sport to showcase emergent technologies and drive sales of televisions. The Olympic Games, or football tournaments like Euro 2020 (which was due to be contested across the entire continent between June and July this year - an almost comical notion in light of developments), are all the excuse many consumers need to bite the bullet, take the plunge and shell out for that nice new TV they’ve been promising themselves.
The Rio 2016 Olympics Games caused a TV sales uptick, and in addition was a big driver of ultra high-definition 4K TVs - both in sales to early-adopters and in upping the mainstream profile of the technology.
No one was seriously suggesting Tokyo 2020 might do the same for 8K, despite there already being some remarkable 8K TVs on the market. But NHK (Japan’s equivalent of the BBC) was planning on broadcasting a big chunk of the event (including the opening and closing ceremonies) in 8K.
But coronavirus has turned the market for new TVs inside out. The first few weeks of lockdown in the UK saw an extraordinary year-on-year spike in the sales of new televisions – several data analysts suggest the increase in volume during March 2020 was anywhere between 24 per cent and 39 per cent compared to March 2019. April and May followed a similar pattern, and by June the volume of sales was roughly 40 per cent greater than in June 2019.
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