Cyclist Bradley Wiggins stands to make £100,000 ($156,000) a week from commercial activities alone after becoming the first Briton ever to win the Tour de France, according to Matt Scott of the London TELEGRAPH. Sports-sponsorship agency BrandRapport Dir Nigel Currie said, “I see him making off-track earnings of £5M ($7.8M) over the next year. He’ll be a big star here, but he’s already become a huge star on the continent and in the U.S., where what Lance Armstrong has done has raised the profile of cycling.” Wiggins' achievements "lend themselves to a particular sector," and we can "expect to see his face on our most mundane household goods, a lucrative market by virtue of its ubiquity." Currie added: “His attraction to marketers has gone way beyond bikes." So if the Londoner can follow up his Tour de France win with success at his home Olympics, he will "strike gold in more ways than one." Currie said, “His great opportunity is to win the tour and add another gold medal two weeks later. That will really put him up there on the global scale (London TELEGRAPH, 7/23).
BLACKED OUT: Meanwhile, MARKETING MAGAZINE's Daniel Farey-Jones reported that Sky, Jaguar and Gatorade "whisked out press ads" in Monday morning newspapers to congratulate Wiggins. However, none of the ads feature a picture of Wiggins "due to the ad blackout in force" between July 18 and Aug. 15. The blackout, administered by LOCOG, is "designed to protect Olympic sponsors" and prohibits competing athletes from "appearing in advertising during and shortly before the Olympic Games." Rather than using a picture of Wiggins or a professional racer, it shows "a boy dressed in casual cycling gear pulling on a yellow T-shirt" (MARKETINGMAGAZINE.co.uk, 7/23).
