Two curious notes about the new national stadium being built for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics:

The national stadium will be used only for soccer and rugby after the 2020 Games. The insight I may have gained from this Japan Times article is that multi-purpose stadiums – ones that might hold a wide variety of events like concerts and sports of different field configurations – can rack up costs due to field re-configurations that outweigh the variety of events that can be held at the stadium.

Having a steady stream of only soccer and rugby events is seen as a more financially beneficial strategy for the stadium.

And yet, for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the national stadium will be very multi-purpose. The intent was to hold track and field events as well as the soccer finals. But as this second Japan Times article indicates, the soccer finals, ironically, may be moved from the national stadium.

The finals is scheduled during the daytime of the final day of the 2020 Olympics. Fears of holding the soccer finals during the heat of day, the time consuming re-configuration required from field events to soccer, as well as a possible overlap with the end of another marquis event – the marathon may push the soccer finals to another stadium.

Fortunately for the organizers, they still have three years to figure this out.