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Marketing and Sponsorship

Toyota Builds Upon IOC Deal By Partnering With U.S. Figure Skating, Speedskating

IOC TOP sponsor Toyota has signed a series of deals extending its rights into the Olympic winter sports world ahead of the '18 PyeongChang Games, signaling it will be an aggressive presence in its first year as IOC sponsor. Just weeks into its eight-year deal with the IOC, Toyota inked new sponsorships with U.S. Figure Skating and U.S. Speedskating, and has also renewed its five-year-old relationship with USA Hockey. Separately, Toyota has also signed personal endorsement contracts with freestyle skiers Gus Kenworthy and Torin Yater-Wallace, who will join Team Toyota. “We are committed to making an impact with our winter sports presence in the United States,” said Toyota Motor Sales Group VP/Marketing Jack Hollis. In each case, Toyota will help co-market the sport and lend its technical expertise to the NGBs. The flurry of new deals follows three months after Toyota signed on as a sponsor of USSA, which includes title rights to the USSA’s Grand Prix snowboarding/free ski tour. All told, Toyota now has relationships with four of the eight winter sport NGBs, a sign the automaker is picking up where former USOC sponsor BMW left off in terms of robust activation in the car category. Terms were not disclosed. As a member of the IOC’s TOP program, Toyota gets comprehensive rights in the mobility category to every national Olympic team and each Games through '24. But like many other sponsors of the Olympics themselves, Toyota uses NGB deals as a way of filling in the gaps on the Olympic schedule and reaching the sports’ grassroots on a day-to-day basis. For instance, in each of the ice sports it now sponsors, Toyota will help develop their Learn to Skate grassroots training program. In USA Hockey, which has been a Toyota partner since '12, Toyota will become presenting sponsor of the Toyota-USA Hockey National Disabled Festival.

LET'S GO PLACES: Kenworthy, a '14 Silver medalist in slope style skiing, and Yater-Wallace, also a ’14 Olympian, become Toyota’s first new members of the multi-sport “Team Toyota” since its Olympic rights started. Toyota last April signed snowboarder Chloe Kim. "It’s the start of what we see will be a great partnership,” said Wasserman VP/Action & Olympics Michael Spencer, who reps both Kenworthy and Yater-Wallace. "I have worked with Toyota in the past and they bring lots of value to the table beyond the written contract. Both Torin and Gus are very excited and looking forward to what the next couple of years will bring with this new relationship.” Speedskating CEO Ted Morris said he is especially excited to have access to Toyota’s experience in NASCAR, which will help inform race strategy in long track team pursuit, short track and relay events. “They’re going to be taking a really scientific approach to that, which for eternity has just been coaches’ feeling and what they’ve seen before,” Morris said. “But to be able to have some outside experts looking at it, with some expertise from NASCAR, is really exciting for us.”

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