Menu
Olympics

Sponsors find value in Paralympics despite timing

The Paralympic Games don’t draw the viewership or attendance of the Olympic Games.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
Corporate enthusiasm for the Paralympics has grown substantially in the last decade, but its spot on the calendar still poses steep challenges to even the most willing sponsors.

The Rio Paralympics wrapped up Sept. 18, but few people noticed. The opening ceremony drew 135,000 viewers to NBCSN in prime time (about the same as an ESPNU airing of “College Football Live” that afternoon) and viewership never got much better, averaging 143,000 over 12 days.

Sponsors are in a tough spot with the Paralympics, which start 2 1/2 weeks after the Olympics end, experts say. During that break in Rio, the NFL, college football and the U.S. Open started, intensifying competition for eyeballs just as marketers are relaxing after an intense Olympics stretch.

Paralympians make for compelling additions to sponsor messages, and in cases like U.S. Olympic Committee sponsor BP, they have taken on a starring role in integrated campaigns. But the Paralympics themselves are so small in terms of potential audience that sponsors can’t justify keeping up the Olympic pace into the fall.

The result is that a handful of prominent Paralympians, such as track star Tatyana McFadden and the “armless archer” Matt Stutzman, now approach Olympian-level celebrity, but the event they’re actually competing in still flies below the radar of American consumers.

Brands like BP see the Paralympic Games as a way to demonstrate company values.
“Brands can successfully make certain Paralympians known as part of their ongoing campaigns,” said Scott Kirkpatrick, a partner at Chicago Sports & Entertainment Partners, which represents Stutzman and triathlete Melissa Stockwell among other Paralympians. “But when the event comes around it’s a much harder lift.”

Take Visa, for instance. A worldwide rights holder to both the International Olympic Committee and International Paralympic Committee, Visa kept a digital and social presence up through the Paralympics, and contributed to the #filltheseats campaign that connected Brazilian children with unused tickets in Rio this month.

But the frequency of the payment processor’s signature TV commercials, which included Paralympians, was timed for the most exposure, peaking in early August during the Rio Olympics when executives timed the company’s biggest expense for the most exposure.

“What we tried to do was … not to create two sets of creative, but have one set of creative that stood for Visa and put it before the biggest audience, which was for the Games in August,” said Chris Curtin, chief brand and innovation marketing officer. He did note that Visa’s Paralympic social and digital spots have generated engagement rates on par with the Olympics.

At the domestic level, the USOC bundles the Olympic and Paralympic rights together, and does not require any minimum level of activation, said Mitch Poll, the USOC’s managing director of partnership marketing. “We have definitely seen a large increase in activation — most, if not all, partners have done some measure of Paralympic activation, whether athlete use, media, content, IP rights, etc.,” Poll said.

At the global level, the rights are sold separately and the cost reflects the smaller audience. In 2014, the IPC generated $14 million in revenue compared with the IOC’s $1.83 billion.

The timing and nature of the Paralympics marketing varies widely. Some air commercials during the Games, but others see the Paralympics as a better time for internal communications with employees and intimate customer connections than mass-market awareness.

BP, which ran a hospitality program in Rio for its athletes’ families, likes the Paralympics as a way to demonstrate its values to employees and customers, partnership chief George Bauernfeind said. BMW emphasized its tech bona fides by designing and promoting a racing wheelchair for Team USA, and Nissan — a local Rio 2016 sponsor — kept open its full slate of on-site activations in Rio, said Chief Communications Officer Jonathan Adashek.

“I think it would be somewhat patronizing to not hold the Paralympic Games to the same level of scrutiny that you do the other properties in your portfolio.”

TIM McGHEE
CSE marketing consultant

Citi, which was among the six sponsors to buy a sponsorship for the NBC broadcasts, is satisfied with its Paralympic investment in spite of the calendar challenges, said Tina Davis, global managing director of sponsorship and marketing. “While there will always be competition for eyeballs from sports and non-sports-related programming, we could not be more pleased with how things have gone so far this year,” she said on Sept. 16.

Kate Gordon, executive vice president for sports at communications consultancy United Entertainment Group, suggests that Paralympic sponsors can still make an impact without the cost of an Olympic-level campaign by using social and digital creative, and by maintaining the connection to the better-known Olympics. Its client, Nissan, worked with sponsored megastar Usain Bolt, for instance, to tweet support to Paralympians during the Paralympics.
The Paralympics are also a good platform for connecting with nonprofits and speaking to an internal audience, Gordon said.

The Paralympics were far more accessible to Americans than ever before, and NBC notes that viewership grew substantially. The roughly 143,000 nightly average nearly tripled 2012 levels, NBC said. With support from USOC sponsors BMW, BP, Citi, Liberty Mutual and Procter & Gamble, NBC Sports expanded its coverage of the Paralympics to 70 hours this year, up from just five in London.

Kirkpatrick, the agent, thinks the eyeballs will eventually come around. “The Olympics stand alone, but I think the Paralympics continue to grow and be in a good spot to capture some positive and growing momentum, but it’s going to take time, and cycles, and great brands like BP.”

If sponsors feel the best way to activate their rights is with a combined Olympics-Paralympics campaign earlier in the year, they shouldn’t be expected to help co-promote the event, said CSE marketing consultant Tim McGhee.

“I do believe that a rising tide helps all ships, and if a brand believes it’s in its best interests to do that, it can only help,” McGhee said. “But I think it would be somewhat patronizing to not hold the Paralympic Games to the same level of scrutiny that you do the other properties in your portfolio.”

Ultimately, he said, it’s on the property to promote the contests itself.

“It’s incumbent upon the property to make it grow,” McGhee said. “I know it’s a cart-and-horse situation, where you need those sponsor dollars to do that, but they have to continue to demonstrate that they can provide increased value to brand marketers who want to sponsor them.”

Fatigue is another factor, among both consumers and workers. In Rio, the Team USA marketing machine mostly wound down after the Olympics. The USOC closed its USA House in Rio, and most senior executives and consultants return stateside. BP, Citi, Procter & Gamble, BMW and Deloitte all had in-person programs, but they were more intimate and targeted than the Olympics, said the USOC’s Nora Reilly.

Visa’s Curtin, echoing others, said the Paralympics are a good vehicle to shape perceptions about the brand, even if far fewer people are paying attention.

“From the perspective of your employees, it really matters to them,” Curtin said. “When they walk around the hallways of Visa, they feel like they have a company that has a purpose, a soul and an identity, and a mission. And some of the most popular brands today are companies that have cultures that have many of those features associated with them.”

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 18, 2024

Sports Business Awards nominees unveiled; NWSL's historic opening weekend and takeaways from CFP deal

ESPN’s Jay Bilas, BTN’s Meghan McKeown, and a deep dive into AppleTV+’s The Dynasty

On this week’s Sports Media Podcast from the New York Post and Sports Business Journal, ESPN’s Jay Bilas talks all things NCAA. Big Ten Network’s Meghan McKeown shares her insight into the Caitlin Clark craze. The Boston Globe’s Chad Finn chats all things Bean Town. And SBJ’s Xavier Hunter drops in to share his findings on how the NWSL is making a social media push.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/09/26/Olympics/Paralympics.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/09/26/Olympics/Paralympics.aspx

CLOSE