Four years after Canada hosted the Vancouver Games, its Olympic committee is in the midst of transforming its business operations. Canadian Olympic Committee CEO Chris Overholt, who joined the organization in '11, has hired a new senior leadership team, doubled the size of its staff from 38 to 100 employees, expanded its sponsorship support and increased its licensing revenue. "(VANOC CEO) John Furlong and his team saw the potential of what the Olympics could mean for the country," Overholt said from his second-floor office at Canada House in Sochi. "It was a watershed. All we've been doing since is making sure that it wasn't a wasted opportunity." When the former Dolphins VP/Marketing Partnerships & New Media joined the COC, the organization was just exiting its joint-marketing agreement with the Vancouver Games. The agreement meant the national Olympic committee let the host city manage sponsorship sales in the market for seven years before the Games. They shared the revenue. Overholt hired one of Vancouver's sales execs, Allison Walker, and they worked to retain some of the sponsors from the '10 Games. They renewed deals with Hudson's Bay Co. (apparel), RBC (finance) and Bell (telecom). Then they added deals with Canadian Tire, adidas and three USOC sponsors: BMW, USG and Hilton. "We looked at the United States and tried to think where can we go and say, 'You can take a position around North America,'" Overholt said. He added that the combination of new and existing deals makes total sponsorship revenue greater than it was for the COC during the Vancouver Games. Sponsorship revenue is up 100%. "Two things happen in Olympic host nations after a Games," Overholt said. "Government support stops, and the private sector has exhaustion around the Olympic movement. It was the opposite in our case. In the two or three years after Vancouver, we were able to grow the revenue from the private sector."
HELPING BUILD LICENSING BUSINESS: The most important corporate partners the COC has signed since Overholt arrived are Hudson's Bay and adidas. Hudson's Bay develops apparel for the team, and adidas develops footwear and performance apparel. The two have helped build the COC's licensing business, which Overholt expects to be a $5-10M business annually in the coming years. "In Canada, that's big business," Overholt said. "That rivals major sports brands." The COC has been aggressive in protecting its intellectual property in Canada ahead of the Sochi Games. It filed a lawsuit against The North Face for developing displays that the COC alleges violated its trademark rights. It also accused Budweiser and Labatt of ambush marketing. Overholt said that the COC started in a place of "reasonableness" with The North Face, but the company was unwilling to change what it was doing. In the case of Labatt and Budweiser, they did not violate rules, he said, but they did violate the spirit of the Canadian rights in the market. "Our job is to help our partners grow their business and grow sales," Overholt said. "They make investments with us and we should protect those positions aggressively."
