The 2020 Olympics and Paralympics — to be held in Tokyo, Japan — are estimated to cost the national government seven times more than what was originally budgeted, Japanese newspaper The Mainichi reported on Friday.
Hosting the mega-events would cost Japan’s national government 801.1 billion yen ($7.03 billion), the report said, citing the country’s Board of Audit. That’s the agency that reviews government expenditure.
Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, had earlier estimated that the games would cost the central authority around 112.7 billion yen, according to the report.
Hosting the Olympics has become an expensive venture, and a number of past hosts — Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro and Russia’s Sochi, for example — went into debt after overshooting their budgets.
For more on the budget of the 2020 games, read the report from The Mainichi.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics are estimated to cost Japan’s national government seven times more than what was originally budgeted.
