TV Guide: Tokyo Olympics 2020 Opening Ceremony

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are live on Seven in what will be the country’s biggest-ever broadcast and digital event. For the first time on Australian free-to-air television, there will be 45 dedicated Olympic channels across Seven and 7plus all live, free and in HD.

In a normal year, the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony would be witnessed by thousands of people in a packed stadium. As a result of the rising rates of Covid-19 however, this year the ceremony will take place in a stadium without spectators. 

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"It will be a much more sobering ceremony. Nevertheless with beautiful Japanese aesthetics. Very Japanese but also in sync with the sentiment of today, the reality," said Marco Balich, the executive producer of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics Opening Ceremony.

"We have to do our best to complete this unique and hopefully the only one of its kind Olympics."

In the Olympics Opening Ceremony this year roughly 50 athletes from Team Australia will be led by Cate Campbell and Patty Mills as they march in a near empty stadium.

Campbell will be the first female swimmer to carry the flag, and Mills is Australia’s first Indigenous flag bearer.

Organisers have not given much away about the show, only speaking about the theme of the night, which is Moving Forward.

Savannah Guthrie, who will host the Opening Ceremony on NBC, has spoken about the impact that the Covid-19 restrictions will have on the Opening Ceremony.

“We’re hoping that there will still be that energy and excitement, but of course it will be different, just like everything post-pandemic has changed. But they still plan to put on a really big, beautiful, patriotic show,” she said.

The Opening Ceremony coverage will begin at 8:30pm AEST for the ceremony to begin at 9pm on Friday, July 23. The ceremony will be around four hours long.