Olympic Sponsorship

The Canadian Olympic Committee will give out $20,000 to Canadian athletes that are good enough to bring home the gold. However, a winning athlete can generate much more by gaining endorsments.

Here is an excerpt from an article entitled "Olympics sponsorship: The value of gold" from the August 18, 2008 issue of Canadian Business magazine.

The stakes are even higher at the corporate level. Companies are betting as much as US$100 million that they can tap into the goodwill the Games generate. It’s a big gamble — not least because Olympic sponsorship doesn’t really change how the public feels about a brand, at least in the short term. In the long term, well, maybe. If a company sticks with it. And has some luck. “Perceptions don’t change that fast,” says Andrew Grenville, chief research officer at Angus Reid Strategies, a market researcher based in Toronto. “Most companies’ images and reputations are built slowly and are slow to erode, which is good, because when there is a crisis, you can bounce back if you handle it well. Or people will forget, eventually.”

Backing the Olympics, though, is not a fast way to build reputation. The more philanthropic a sponsorship is, the more it resonates with the public. Giving money to the Games or its athletes is viewed as just a bit more altruistic than plastering your corporate name on a professional sports ticket. Something more community-based, such as education, charity or health organizations, will typically lead to stronger perceptions of leadership and citizenship — solid predictors of whether consumers will recommend a company to others.