Will the games pay? An event analysis of the 2020 summer Olympics announcement on stock markets in Japan, Spain, and Turkey

ABSTRACT

As a wealthy, highly developed city with many existing athletic facilities, Tokyo seems uniquely placed to profit from hosting the 2020 Olympics and boost the Japanese economy. We test this hypothesis using event analysis to determine whether the holding period return on Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 stock index showed abnormal returns following the IOC’s announcement that Tokyo would host the 2020 Summer Games. We use the same technique to investigate whether the stock markets in Madrid or Istanbul – the other finalist cities – showed abnormally low holding period returns in the wake of the announcement.

KEYWORDS:

• Event analysis
• Olympics
• abnormal return

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• G14
• L83

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ For more on the disadvantages faced by host cities from emerging economies, see Zimbalist (2015).

² For a more complete description, see Leeds and Leeds (2012).

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful to the Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters for summer funding to support this research.