◼COVI March 16, 2020

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� The Olympic stadium

in Tokyo

○ With a $5.9 billion budget and a decade of plan-

ning behind it, the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo

had been expected to draw 11,000 of the world’s elite

athletes and more than 600,000 tourists when it

starts in late July. But with the coronavirus spreading

rapidly, and Japan having already closed schools and

canceled public events, the International Olympic

Committee is reportedly assessing its options—

including a games with few, if any, spectators.

That prospect is becoming less unthinkable by

the day. Some U.S. college basketball, European

soccer, and Japanese baseball teams are competing

in empty venues. The annual Formula One race in

Bahrain on March 22 will be run without any fans.

Even the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony, which

usually takes place in Greece amid much fanfare,

is scheduled to occur this week without spectators.

For organizers, an Olympics behind closed doors

may be the best of a bunch of bad options. It would

satisfy the athletes and, equally important, the

media companies that pay the IOC billions to broad-

cast the events—but only if they happen.

What’s more, in-person fans are a diminishing

source of revenue. When Atlanta hosted the 1996

Summer Games, tickets accounted for 25% of the

budget. In Tokyo, they are half that. In a sign of

things to come, Japan’s bid for the 2022 World Cup

included technology to broadcast the matches

be po

Dynamics, a research service focused on the indus-

try. “They may realize that putting all their invest-

ments in one market is risky, and I’m sure they will

be thinking hard about that in the future.”

Senior Peugeot executives who take direct charge

of pressing bottlenecks have been granted full power

and resources to fix an issue. In some cases, parts

have been brought in via air instead of by road. But

air cargo is more expensive and risks driving up

costs over time. The company is also monitoring its

product mix, potentially cutting back on variants

such as diesel cars, and increasing hybrid or gaso-

line models. “We have a long list of issues, but we’ve

managed to keep production going,” Picat says. “We

could fail one day. So far so good.”

For PSA Chief Executive Officer Carlos Tavares,

avoiding a shortage in components, models, or

workers and keeping factories on course is crucial

this year. He’s in the middle of pulling off the biggest

industry deal in more than two decades, a merger

with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV to create the

world’s fourth-largest carmaker. With a reputation

for efficiency and delivering industry-beating profit

margins, Tavares has enjoyed PSA’s full order books

and plants running at maximum capacity.

Like many corporations, PSA has taken some

precautions to protect its workforce from the virus.

Visitors are required to fill in questionnaires asking

about recent travel to China, Italy, and other corona-

virus hot spots. And Tavares himself refrains from

too-direct contact with others. At a press briefing last

week, he kept his distance, standing on a stage to

address a room of journalists seated on chairs placed

far apart from one another.

The war room gatherings have already helped

PSA avoid some breakdowns. When a manufacturer

in Hubei stopped supplying parts for rear vehicle

sections, PSA’s engineers searched through the

car’s development phase and tracked down proto-

type machines that could stamp out the parts in

sufficient quantity—albeit at a slower pace—to fill

the gap until the Chinese partner started up again.

Turns out, the replacement machine was in Milan,

in northern Italy, the epicenter of the European

virus outbreak and now in a government-mandated

lockdown. “We managed to get the machines to

another Italian supplier, so it all worked out in

the end,” Picat says. That was before March 9,

of course, when all of Italy went into lockdown.

�Tara Patel and Chad Thomas

Do the Olympics

really need an

audience?

ss