The Olympic Games are known to be an exceptional event that happens every four years and involves the participation of all countries around the globe. These countries are responsible for sending their representative athletes to the chosen venue for the year to demonstrate their prowess and train them to perform fully within their sport. Whether that sport is track and field, swimming, judo, basketball, or whatever else is available to estimate the country's greatness in how they train their stars, the coliseum is the center stage for those countries to showcase them in their glory. However, that glory for these athletes can be stained by political and criminal events happening on the inside and the outside.
With the Olympic Paris 2024 games' minimal desecration, it could be debated that the Israeli-Palestine War could be responsible for bringing a dark cloud upon its proceedings. The dark cloud also includes the repulsive inclusion of Steven Van De Velde within the games, as he is a known child predator. This cloud was also apparent at the 2020 Tokyo Games when there was bribery and bid-rigging, with advertising companies such as Denstu being allowed preferential treatment due to relationships with officials.
These scandals raise the question: Can these troubling interferences eventually impact those who wish to sponsor the games? The decrease in advertising revenue for NBCUniversal, the main broadcasting channel for the Olympics, went from about 1.25 billion dollars to about 1.2 billion dollars, indicating a financial downgrade in traction (NBCUniversal, 2024). This decline in revenue for this year’s games could be attributed to the scandals that plagued the last Olympic Games, souring people’s enjoyment of the international event.
Is it risky for companies to sponsor the Olympics, as the event can be a boiling pot of intersecting issues that highlight the hostile zeitgeist of each decade? The potential for these issues to spill over into the games, whether a global pandemic or a war, is a genuine concern that disrupts communication between the brand and the target audience. This intersection raises the question of whether the potential benefits of sponsoring the Olympics outweigh these risks. Companies must be aware of these potential risks in endorsing themselves with the Olympics with caution and a clear understanding of the possible challenges.
When it comes to event marketing revolving around the appliance of sponsorships for athletes and any regular sporting event, they have an apparent viability that is easy to exploit. Sponsorships involve attaching the title to an already publicized person or event with high engagement, allowing companies to increase brand recognition by adding more awareness. Pairing brands with these recognized events could be responsible for improving their target audience's recall of the brand in alignment with their high publicity (Po-Lin et, 2024). Sponsorships could be about finding clever methods for companies to direct themselves to their consumers while enjoying live, action-packed entertainment in their seats.
There also seem to be more positive personality traits associated with athletes than with actors or musicians, despite all three divisions of celeb inducing their fair share of scandal. These traits could be emphasized because athletes are known to be more physical than creatively involved within their cultures, in which they could obtain bruises or break their bones. By how these athletes tend to work in teams, they can enforce the qualities of "loyalty," "harmony." and "comradeship" within their plays, which could connect with their crowds if they are not spoiled by their faults or the faults of their home (Desmarcias, 2024). Their appeal is all about teamwork; the brand imposes itself upon the teams, and the teams impose themselves upon the crowds through their performance, which can create success for everyone involved in the sponsorship. This sense of unity and cooperation is what makes sponsorships successful and impactful. This unity and collaboration can inspire and connect with the audience, making them feel part of something bigger than themselves.
Regarding the Olympics and how their athletes can connect with the players, there is no doubt that the crowd's loyalty elicits a certain sense of patriotism in their countries. Most audience members are almost as willing to trust their star Olympians as they are eager to trust a political leader as their spokesperson (Yoo & Jin, 2018). They are willing to pay attention to the Olympians to show support for their country's prowess, in which they catch sight of the sponsorships, whether aired during the commercial or featured as electronic banners within the stadium. It results in all teamwork-related, corporate, or patriotic messages being intertwined within a single showing of the Olympic Games aimed at the audience.
Companies should be aware of the liabilities that might distort their sponsorships, which are outside events that have already been made public through every national outlet. Most negative attention can be directed to various perpetrators, categorized by their geography instead of iconic names and logos. The outer bodies will be responsible for causing such disruption within the stadium, as it cannot be the promoters' fault, as they are not the sole cause of the audience's ire.
Advertisers in the Olympics are included in getting flack, whether it would be the demonstration of using artificial intelligence to help a girl write a letter to her favourite athlete or a Chinese athlete licking a ping-pong paddle. Those are examples of fault on the companies themselves instead of complicated issues related to various political and legislative ideals each participating country promotes. Most surrounding matters, if they are not heavily implicated in the interworkings of the Olympics, will not deter sponsors from the event because it is easy to accept that some global circumstances can be unavoidable. Unless direct involvement from every single country and every official contributes to one reputation-ruining scandal, there cannot be a strong enough reason for discontinuing every sponsorship if those controversies have already been reported beforehand and can’t be managed over international borders.
Written by: Wyatt Flett
Creative Advertising Program (CAB)
Citations/Resources
Agence France-Presse in Tokyo (2023, February) Japan’s top ad agency indicted over Olympics bid-rigging scandal. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/28/japan-top-ad-agency-dentsu-indicted-olympics- bid-rigging-scandal
Ames, N. (2024, July 24) Palestine Olympic chief: no handshakes with the Israelis unless they recognize state. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/27/palestine-olympic-chief-no-handshakes-w ith-israelis-unless-they-recognise-state-paris-2024.
Carrathuers, E. (2024, July 25) Nike Olympic ad branded DISRESPECTFUL by the Chinese for 'unacceptable' scene in 90 second clip starring LeBron James and Kylian Mbappe. Dailymail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-13674281/Nike-Olympic-ad-branded-DISRE SPECTFUL-Chinese-unacceptable-scene-90-second-clip-starring-LeBron-James-Kylian-Mbapp e.html
Chien, M, P. , Kelly, S. Weeks, C. (2016) Sport Scandal and Sponsorship Decisions: Team Identification Matters. Journal of Sport Management. DOI:10.1123/jsm.2015-0327
Desmarais, F. (2017). Who is the Athlete Endorser? A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Advertising Practitioners’ Views. Journal of Global Marketing, 30(1), 12–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/08911762.2016.1250976
Elias, J (2024, August 2). Google pulls AI ad for Olympics following backlash. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/02/google-pulls-ai-ad-for-olympics-following-backlash.html
Ethan, J. C. (2021). Everything you need to know about Olympics advertising: How much NBC is asking for ad inventory, what brands think about spectator-less games and answers to more of your most commonly asked Olympics questions. Advertising Age, 92(11), 18. https://libaccess.senecapolytechnic.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/everyt hing-you-need-know-about-olympics/docview/2556024975/se-2
NBCUniversal. (April 9, 2024). Advertising revenue of NBCUniversal's broadcast of the 2020 and 2024 Summer Olympic Games (in billion U.S. dollars) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved August 08, 2024, from https://www-statista-com.libaccess.senecapolytechnic.ca/statistics/1481008/summer-olympics-nb c-advertising-revenue/
Pan, P., Phua, J., & Woo, C. W. (2021). Understanding How Consumers Perceive Brand Personality Through Sports Sponsorship. Journal of Sports Media, 16(2), 87-110. https://libaccess.senecapolytechnic.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/un derstanding-how-consumers-perceive-brand/docview/2630531829/se-2
Van Der Zee. (2024, July 30). Why the Netherlands seems unfazed by sending a convicted child rapist to the Olympics. The Guardians. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/30/netherlands-child-rapist-olympi cs-steven-van-de-velde
Yoo, J., Lee, H., & Jin, Y. (2018). Effects of Celebrity Credibility on Country’s Reputation: A Comparison of an Olympic Star and a Political Leader. Corporate Reputation Review, 21(3), 127–136. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41299-018-0048-5