Intro:

The International Olympic Committee opens the door for baseball and softball to return at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, at a news conference in Tokyo on Wednesday.

Script:

SOUNDBITE: (English) John Coates, International Olympic Committee Tokyo 2020 Coordination Committee Chairman (on the opportunity for Olympic host cities to now add additional sports under the Agenda 2020 reforms):

"This is an opportunity. It would be just for the particular Games. It's an opportunity to recognise sports that still fit the criteria of being international and all the other criteria that the IOC would look at. But it's an opportunity to reflect the wishes of the host country, it's public and the sport that they support."

SOUNDBITE: (English) John Coates, International Olympic Committee Tokyo 2020 Coordination Committee Chairman (confirming the IOC has suggested playing the 2020 basketball preliminaries and final outside of Tokyo):

"We have suggested to the organising committee that the preliminaries for basketball, just as for football, they may care to look at cities like Osaka, that have large venues. This would give us an opportunity to take the Games to other parts of Japan, would increase the capacity, it would have a benefit in terms of revenue from tickets sales and that is something that could be associated with this."