On May 17, 2024, in Toulouse, France, at the scene of the Paris Olympic torch relay, a vehicle adorned with the Coca-Cola logo passed by. Official Olympic sponsors, while gaining extensive exclusive rights, must also accept strict limitations. In the context of increasingly diversified marketing channels, the uncertainty of the benefits brought by exclusive rights is growing higher, while the constraints brought by strict limitations are becoming more and more significant. Since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) launched the TOP "Global Partners" sponsorship program in 1985, this highest level of Olympic sponsorship rights has been regarded as one of the most valuable sponsorship rights globally. The "Global Partners" have strict exclusivity, ensuring that the brand images of sponsoring companies are fully displayed as the events are broadcast. Additionally, sponsors can use the Olympic logo worldwide, which has become an important force for some sponsors to enhance their market position. The Olympic TOP sponsorship program operates on a four-year cycle, with the Summer Olympics as the dividing point. From its inception in 1985 to the 1988 Seoul Olympics as the first cycle, it has gone through ten cycles up to the 2024 Paris Olympics (for details of the sponsors, see the table). Among these sponsors, there are companies like Coca-Cola, Panasonic, and VISA that have continuously sponsored from the first to the latest cycle, as well as companies like FedEx, Mars Food, Ricoh, Swatch, Johnson & Johnson, Lenovo, and Acer that have only sponsored for one cycle (although Manulife Insurance is nominally only a sponsor for one Beijing Olympic cycle, its sponsorship rights were actually obtained through the acquisition of John Hancock Insurance, so strictly speaking, it is not a one-cycle Olympic sponsor). Observing the companies that have exited the ranks of Olympic sponsors, it is not difficult to find that very few have exited due to their own development issues, such as Kodak. Most of the companies that have exited have decided to do so after weighing the benefits and costs. Regardless of the official reasons for withdrawal, the root cause is either the price is too high or the sponsorship rights are not well realized.
Olympic sponsorship is good, but it is difficult and expensive.
The benefits of Olympic sponsorship are most deeply felt not by the three companies that have sponsored the Olympics since the beginning of the TOP program—Coca-Cola, Panasonic, and VISA—but by South Korea's Samsung. Before the Seoul Olympics, Samsung was in financial difficulty, having just laid off 30% of its workforce and with debts amounting to $17 billion. Due to the previous large-scale expansion of its product line, which led to a backlog of products, Samsung had to reduce prices to clear inventory. This made Samsung perceived as a company that manufactures cheap products, with no relation to world-class enterprises or brands. Faced with the opportunity of the local Olympics, Samsung chose to take a risk and became the local sponsor of that year's Olympics, with rights second only to global partners. This sponsorship helped Samsung achieve a 27% increase in performance that year and the opportunity to enhance its brand image. Nearly a decade after the Seoul Olympics, in 1997, after lengthy negotiations between the IOC and Motorola, they were close to reaching a TOP Global Partner agreement, but they could not agree on the sponsorship amount in the final stage, leading to the breakdown of negotiations. Samsung quickly seized the opportunity, and after three consecutive days of negotiations, reached an agreement with the IOC to become a TOP Global Partner of the Olympics. From the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics to the present, Samsung has gradually grown into a world-class enterprise, and the Samsung brand has become a world-class brand. Olympic marketing has played a very key role in Samsung's growth, and Samsung's Olympic sponsorship has become one of the most classic cases in the history of sports marketing. When every company decides to join the ranks of Olympic TOP sponsors, they hope to achieve similar effects to Samsung—using the Olympic platform to enhance brand image and expand global influence. However, few brands can achieve similar effects to Samsung. Taking McDonald's and Toyota, which also focus on the consumer market, as examples, it can be seen that it is not so easy for companies to effectively realize Olympic sponsorship rights. McDonald's became a TOP Global Partner from the 2000 Sydney Olympic cycle, and this sponsorship brought huge benefits to McDonald's, especially the combined force formed by McDonald's and Coca-Cola, which deeply tied McDonald's stores to the Olympics, creating a strong blocking effect on main competitors. However, after five cycles of TOP sponsorship, in 2017, the IOC announced that the TOP sponsorship contract with McDonald's, which was originally scheduled to last until the 2020 Tokyo Olympic cycle, ended three years early. After 40 years of sponsoring the Olympics and 20 years as a TOP sponsor, McDonald's chose to part ways with the Olympics. At that time, McDonald's explained that the main reason for withdrawing from the Olympic sponsorship was that the following several Olympic Games were held in Asia, including Pyeongchang in 2018, Tokyo in 2020, and Beijing in 2022. For McDonald's, whose main market is in Europe and America, the impact of time differences on live broadcasts is inevitable, and the overall sponsorship effect will be greatly reduced. Along with the Asian cycle came the rise in the price of TOP sponsorship rights. The threshold for TOP sponsorship rights was $60 million during the 2008 Beijing Olympic cycle, increased to $80 million during the London Olympic cycle, and broke through $100 million during the Rio Olympic cycle. The following Tokyo Olympic cycle covered two Olympics with significant market influence, Tokyo and Beijing, so the IOC raised the sponsorship threshold to nearly $200 million. Toyota joined the TOP Global Partner series during the Rio Olympic cycle, paying 100 billion yen in sponsorship for the two Olympic cycles from 2016 to 2024, which was more than $800 million at the exchange rate at the time. Before the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to media reports, Toyota intended to end its sponsorship agreement with the IOC after this Olympic Games. Although price is often the trigger for companies to withdraw from the Olympic sponsorship series, the more important reason is that the realization of Olympic sponsorship rights requires quite harsh conditions: As a fast-food brand, McDonald's finds it difficult to make consumers strongly perceive product innovation. In the early stages of sponsorship, because the beverage brand used by McDonald's was Coca-Cola, the combined force of the two brands made every McDonald's store an effective carrier of Olympic sponsorship rights, and the sponsorship benefits at that time were considerable. However, as Coca-Cola's tie with the Olympics became tighter, consumers easily associated the Olympic logo on McDonald's stores with Coca-Cola when they saw it, and McDonald's sponsorship rights were in fact diluted. In addition, the product structure of fast food is a few classic products + frequently updated new products, and the speed of new product iteration is often measured in months, at the slowest also according to seasons. Although there will be targeted new products during the Olympic cycle, it is difficult to strictly distinguish these new products from those during non-Olympic periods, making it hard to carry Olympic sponsorship rights. The problem Toyota faces is that the product iteration cycle of automobiles is too long, coupled with Toyota's desire to showcase hydrogen fuel cell technology during the Olympics, but the fuel cell technology route has been marginalized in the automotive industry, leading to almost no updates in its technology and products during Toyota's Olympic sponsorship cycle. Tokyo, Beijing, Paris, three consecutive Summer/Winter Olympics, the main product used to carry Toyota's Olympic sponsorship rights is the Toyota Mirai. Lacking new technology and products, even without the impact of the pandemic, Toyota's Olympic sponsorship is difficult to achieve the desired effect. Before the Paris Olympics, hundreds of scientists, engineers, and scholars jointly signed an open letter calling on the organizers of the Paris Olympics to abandon the use of Toyota's Mirai car as the official car of the Olympics. They believe that the vast majority of hydrogen is currently produced using fossil fuels, and even if the hydrogen used by Toyota's Mirai during the Olympics comes from green sources, it will still convey to consumers the wrong message that current hydrogen fuel is clean enough. This is the situation that Olympic sponsorship least wants to happen, that is, the products or actions of the sponsor trigger public questioning. Similar to Toyota's hydrogen fuel cars are Coca-Cola's high-sugar beverages and McDonald's high-calorie foods, which have also triggered public questioning during the Olympic sponsorship process. If companies lack effective methods in risk prevention and crisis management, it will have a negative impact on both the IOC and the sponsoring companies.
Olympic sponsorship > Olympic Games sponsorshipIn fact, difficulty and cost are not the biggest challenges for Olympic sponsorship. With the increasing richness of Olympic communication channels and the diversification of marketing channels, the proportion of official Olympic sponsors, especially top-tier Global Partners, in the overall Olympic marketing is visibly shrinking. If we were to select the best sponsorship case for this Paris Olympics, LVMH would undoubtedly be the winner. As a second-tier Olympic sponsor—local sponsor of the Olympic Games—LVMH's rights are strictly speaking not as extensive as those of Global Partners. However, when evaluated in terms of sponsorship effectiveness and attention, LVMH is unquestionably the victor of the Paris Olympics. The opening and closing ceremony attire, competition clothing, and medal packaging it designed for the French delegation have all garnered global television viewers' attention. There are numerous other cases where the sponsorship effects of second-tier local Olympic sponsors have surpassed those of Global Partners. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when I was working at CCTV's sports channel, my colleague was responsible for transporting champion athletes who had completed all their events to CCTV's studio for interview recordings. Seizing the opportunity, my colleague had each champion sign the hood of the service vehicle, making it the only one with signatures from all Chinese champions of the Beijing Olympics. After the Olympics, the car was collected by the sponsor Volkswagen, and this collectible that embodies the sponsorship benefits was not the result of prior planning but a spontaneous idea from the colleague in charge of transportation.
In addition to lower-tier sponsors outperforming higher-tier ones, it is more common for non-official Olympic sponsors to find various ways to climb onto the Olympic sponsorship bandwagon. For example, during the 2008 Olympics, Li-Ning sponsored the on-camera attire of journalists and hosts on CCTV. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, CCTV's sports channel was renamed the Olympic Channel, and the channel logo included the Olympic rings. The clothing of on-camera journalists and hosts certainly bore the Olympic Channel's logo, and as a sponsor, Li-Ning's logo would also appear on the attire. In this way, although Li-Ning did not become an Olympic sponsor, it still achieved the effect of having its brand logo appear alongside the Olympic rings. In the era when the Olympics could only be disseminated through official channels, becoming an official Olympic sponsor could enjoy the rewards brought by Olympic communication once and for all. Even though official sponsors' brand exposure at the Olympics needs to be strictly limited, such as no pure advertising content allowed within the venue, only by becoming an official Olympic sponsor can one have the right to appear in official Olympic channels. Nowadays, due to the diversification of content and channels, even if one invests heavily to become a TOP Global Partner, it is still necessary to invest more funds to occupy as many Olympic communication channels as possible, especially unofficial ones, to prevent competitors from occupying the Olympic marketing territory through unofficial content and channels. For this Paris Olympics, BYD sponsored a program on China Central Radio and Television. This is both a continuation and strengthening of the previous sponsorship of CCTV's Euro Cup program and a "communication interception" of Toyota, the TOP Global Partner of the Olympics. Moreover, while official sponsors at all levels of the Olympics receive sponsorship benefits, they also need to undertake a large number of obligations, such as providing various services and material supplies for the Olympics. This leads to the need for more human resources from official sponsors to be invested in ensuring the Olympics. In terms of Olympic marketing, official sponsors also need to strictly follow the guidelines of the International Olympic Committee and cannot use sponsorship rights at will. On the one hand, a large amount of human resources is needed for Olympic guarantees, and on the other hand, marketing methods are strictly limited. Although official Olympic sponsors have many exclusive rights, they are not necessarily the ones with an advantage in this Olympic marketing battle. Olympic sponsorship is undoubtedly still the top rights in the current marketing field, but the challenges it faces cannot be ignored, especially the dilution of the rights of official Olympic sponsors by more content forms and communication channels, which is a widely existing common problem. How to adjust the existing Olympic sponsorship system to adapt to a more diversified communication environment is a high-level exam paper facing the International Olympic Committee and every organizer of a world-class sports event.
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