Municipalities registered to host and root for Olympic teams from abroad are finding very little to cheer about concerning tickets to attend the Tokyo Games.

Many of these “host towns” have already made preparations to roll out the welcome mat and organized cheering squads for the Olympic athletes.

But the hosts have often come up short or empty-handed in the secretive and confusing lottery system to gain Olympic tickets. Local officials are now struggling to find ways to send residents to the Games to cheer for their befriended delegations.

The municipalities have registered with the central government’s host town program to welcome athletes from overseas for exchange activities with residents.

Some of the municipalities also serve as pre-Olympic training sites.

‘ZERO TICKETS’

The city of Murayama in Yamagata Prefecture signed up for the host town initiative in December 2016 to welcome Bulgarian athletes. The city and the European country share the same official flower, the rose.

Bulgaria’s rhythmic gymnastics team has been in camp in Murayama three times, performing for residents and joining them in various activities.

A local fan club intends to form a large cheering squad and support the athletes at the Olympics by waving a hand-sewn Bulgarian national flag.

However, when city officials and fan club members applied for tickets in the first round of the public lottery in May last year, almost all of them failed to obtain tickets.

Olympic tickets are also set aside for registered host towns, but these tickets are also distributed to the municipalities through a lottery.

When this ticket allocation system was announced last year, Murayama officials and residents applied for 30 tickets for rhythmic gymnastics, the maximum number allocated for each municipality.

But they failed to secure even a single ticket.

"We couldn't believe we got zero tickets," said Katsuhiko Yaguchi, 60, chief of the city section in charge of exchange activities for the Tokyo 2020 Games.

Before the second round of the public lottery was held in November last year, city officials visited households and provided advice on how to apply.

Their efforts might have helped because 10 residents won a total of 46 tickets.

The officials are planning to arrange daily buses to Tokyo for at least 100 residents from Aug. 7 to 9 when the rhythmic gymnastics competition is held so they can cheer for the Bulgarian team.

“I had imagined that we would root for them just like we would at Koshien Stadium,” Yaguchi said, referring to the venue of the annual National High School Baseball Championship. “Although we are still aspiring to do so, we simply don’t have enough tickets.”

Yaguchi is now making inquiries to travel agencies and other parties in hopes of obtaining extra tickets. He is also waiting for the results of the second round of the lottery for tickets allocated for host towns.

DETAILS KEPT IN THE DARK

As of the end of 2019, 478 cities, towns and villages had registered as host towns for 163 countries and regions expected to join the 2020 Games, according to the Cabinet Secretariat.

Ticket allocations for host towns were introduced to enable them to cheer for the delegations they have received.

However, an official said the government cannot reveal details about the total number of allocated tickets and which competitions are covered under the initiative.

SCHEDULING CONFUSION

The town of Kanra in Gunma Prefecture will host Nicaragua’s delegation. When town officials applied for 30 tickets for track and field events in which Nicaraguan athletes are expected to compete, they won all the tickets.

A lottery will be held to distribute the tickets to residents who have participated in exchange activities.
“We picked seats that seemed unlikely to attract popularity, and it might have worked,” a Kanra official said.

Fuji city in Shizuoka Prefecture, which will host Switzerland’s swimming team and the Latvian track and field delegation, applied for 30 tickets for swimming competitions in the first round of the lottery for host towns. The city won 15 tickets.

“We were told that (the tickets) were meant for host towns, so, honestly, we were disappointed to see that we lost as many as half (of our applications),” a city official said.

Some municipalities are confused over how to apply for tickets because tournament pairings have yet to be determined for many events.

Officials of the Ibaraki city government in Osaka Prefecture, which is hosting the Italian water polo team and other athletes, decided not to apply for tickets in the first round of the lottery allocated for host towns.

When the application deadline for the second round of the lottery neared, the officials said they still had no idea which team Italy would face.

“We made the application anyway. It would be best if we could root for Italy,” an official said.

An official from another host town suggested that the results of the ticket system are going against the government’s purpose of using host towns.

“They said things like, ‘Boost the mood from local areas,’ to get us motivated for the Olympics, but we can’t be there because we don’t have tickets,” the official said. “We feel disheartened.”