Will IOC get rid of golf or other sports and add futsal or beach soccer in 2020?

I would imagine Futsal, but I don't know for sure.

I have thought about this for a while, although I assumed Futsal would join the summer Games if it was admitted.

I have never heard FIFA press for their admission though.

 

I don't watch futsal or beach soccer. I could see there being many countries where the Summer Olympic team sport they care the most about is Men's Soccer but where they would care more about Men's Basketball than futsal or beach soccer.

 

I got somewhat into Beach Soccer when Dubai hosted the World Cup in 2009.

Of course Switzerland making the final helped...

 

Indeed!

The Futsal Women's World Cup isn't organized by FIFA, and has just 8 teams.

Neither FIFA or the continental confederations host women's beach soccer tournaments. There's also no women's tournament at the Asian Beach Games, European Games or South American Beach Games.

 

The IOC have announced the 5 sports to be added to the Tokyo 2020 programme.

• Baseball/Softball
• Karate
• Surfing
• Skateboarding
• Sports climbing

 

Crowds for non-South American matches at Rio have been terrible.

Television is another history, I guess.

 

1992 was a purely under 23 competition, but after that the IOC asked for the inclusion of more high profile players and so the exception was introduced in 1996, not for the preliminary competition though.

 

A good way to add sports without increasing the # of athletes is to eliminate team events for sports which are not team sports under any stretch of the imagination. Some examples include swimming relay races, team gymnastics and synchronized diving.

There is no teamwork in these competitions, its just an accumulation of individual scores to arrive at an overall team score. They require no skills or training beyond what is required for the equivalent individual event. Furthermore, such team events cause the athlete count to increase quickly and mostly for big countries which already have a lot of athletes.

 

If you remove relay races and team gymnastics, the number of competitors won't decrease. They also compete individually.

 

Yeah, maybe it wouldn't reduce the # of athletes as much as I think. But I think it would decrease the # of athletes somewhat. I mean, would there really be 5 women and 5 men for just one country competing individually in gymnastics if the team competition didn't consist of groups of 5? Especially for the weaker countries?

Even if made-up team events like swimming medley relay, team gymnastic, etc. need to stay because they generate revenue, surely the teams could be made smaller. That's the good thing about a made-up team event: the teams could be as large or small as thet IOC wants them to be. Its not like field hockey where you need a certain number of players to play the game properly.

That's why I like Track & Field. There are no made-up events (not off the top of my head, at least). There's no team decathlon. And we don't see Usain Bolt run a 100m final 3 times like we did with Simone Biles' floor exercise. He does it once, that's it!

 

I watch any kind of football - regular football, futsals, amatures, professionals.
Futsal is a great fit for the Olympics. It's hugely popular in some parts of the world. In Croatia, for example, you may see a few thousand people attending futsal matches. So, yes, we need more futsal featuring both men and women.

 

How about this: they lengthen the Summer Olympics by a full week, and add the sports already mentioned for 2020 plus futsal and beach soccer. It doesn't hurt to lengthen the celebration, and could actually help the host country to get a lot more revenue ticket-wise, viewership-wise, and tourist-wise and without adding much more cost as once you already build a stadium, it's built. It doesn't matter if it is for a two or three-week period, the cost won't be much different.

 

If the teams got smaller, some countries could have enough good athletes that they would want to enter two teams (which I think happens with luge and/or bobsled in the Winter Olympics). If swimming relays were reduced from 4 to 2, the United States would probably want to enter multiple teams. From the point of view of the athletes, the more players per team, the more medals the athletes get (counting team medals once per player on the team). As for gymnastics, if Biles (and the other gymnasts) did each event once, the same person doing the same event would count toward multiple medals (one team and one individual). In general, I would expect gold medal winners to be happy even if they have previously had more points, faster times, or whatever the sport goes by. If the same gymnastics performance counted towards individual and team medals, a gymnast could win a gold medal but still be disappointed because his or her team could have won a better medal with a better individual performance. Track and Field does have relays, and I don't know how many runners (if any) run the same distance as part of an individual event and a relay. Another cause of repetition is that a track or pool only has a certain number of lanes, and there are heats to eliminate athletes or teams until you get down to few enough athletes or teams to fit on the track or in the pool together. This isn't a problem with gymnastics. The more gymnasts, the longer the competition takes, but gymnastics does not have athletes racing on an event simultaneously.

 

Relays in Track and Field require teamwork and new skills that running the 100m individually doesn't require (i.e. the baton exchange, running around corners, etc.). With the swimming relays there is no teamwork. It's just adding together the individual times. It literally requires zero extra training to prepare for a swimming relay (beyond the training required for the individual race of the same distance). Same for gymnastics, synchronized diving and a few others.

So personally I don't have much problem with the T&F relays because they are fundamentally different than the individual "equivalent" event.

That said, the Track & Field relays do increase the # of athletes since the maximum # of qualifiers that any one country can have for a single event is three. But of course you need 4 for the relays. So there's at least 1 runner for each country that's part of the relay team who didn't qualify for the individual event of the same distance.

 

Sports climbing? Terrible choice. Surfing is a tricky one, but fits in nicely. Albeit Tokio itself has no surfing beaches.

Nice to see Karate. Especially awkward not to have this event, while Taekwondo and Judo are represented. Obviously in a move to increase Japan's medal count (and Egypt's as well).

Baseball / Softball is probably a nod to the Japanese as they are pretty strong at least in the female version. Still... by comparison I think beach soccer or futsal would draw in much larger crowds.

 

Futsal is not played in a handful of countries. Its pretty popular across Europe and America. Plus its gaining ground in Asia. Very good attendance rates.

 

LOL. 3 out of 5 are not even sports. IOC is turning into a big joke year after year.

I don't think baseball will ever work in the Olympics unless MLB players are in it. Btw Japan is strong in men's baseball too.

 

There's concerns of the Summer Olympics being excessively expensive.
How about splitting them into Outdoor Games and Indoor Games?

Outdoor Games: outdoor athletics, triathlon, road cycling, mountain biking, open waters swimming, kayaking, rowing, sailing, football, rugby, tennis, golf, beach volley, beach soccer, field hockey, equestrian, archery, surfing, stkateboarding, climbing.

Indoor Games: indoor athletics, gymnastics, pool swimming, diving, futsal, indoor volleyball, ping pong, weightlifting, boxing, karate, judo, taekwondo, fencing, shooting, wrestling.