The International Olympic Committee voted Wednesday to accept a five-sport package that included baseball and softball in the 2020 Olympics at Tokyo.
Karate, skateboarding, sports climbing and surfing will also be included. Baseball and softball are considered one sport with separate men's and women's competitions by the IOC.
“We want to take sport to the youth," IOC President Thomas Bach said in a release. "With the many options that young people have, we cannot expect any more that they will come automatically to us. We have to go to them.
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"Tokyo 2020’s balanced proposal fulfils all of the goals of the Olympic Agenda 2020 recommendation that allowed it. Taken together, the five sports are an innovative combination of established and emerging, youth-focused events that are popular in Japan and will add to the legacy of the Tokyo Games.”
Tokyo 2020 President Yoshiro Mori agreed.
"The inclusion of the package of new sports will afford young athletes the chance of a lifetime to realize their dreams of competing in the Olympic Games — the world's greatest sporting stage — and inspire them to achieve their best, both in sport and in life.”
The IOC considered a variety of factors when assessing the proposal, including the impact on gender equality, the youth appeal of the sports and the legacy value of adding them to the Tokyo Games.
The inclusion of the new sports will add 18 events and 474 athletes, with equal numbers of women and men for all sports except baseball/softball, which will have the same number of teams but different player totals, because softball teams have 15 players while baseball teams have 24.