News Notes: McDonald’s To Be Hands-Off For 2016 Vote
McDonald’s is a TOP sponsor. McDonald’s is based in Chicago. Chicago wants the 2016 Olympics. A competition is under way between the Windy City, Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro.
What’s an influential sponsor to do in the run-up to next October’s vote in Copenhagen?
Nothing, said McDonald’s vice president for global marketing Johan Jervoe, who spoke the other day at a sponsors’ confab staged by the Olympic newsletter Around The Rings.
“Yes, we are based in Chicago, but we also are based in Tokyo,” Jervoe said. “We have a significant presence in Spain. It doesn’t come as a surprise that we’re in Rio, too. We do not call the IOC. It is clearly not our role. I’m from Denmark. I’ll be happy when the result is decided in Copenhagen.”
On another sticky matter, one of McDonald’s majorly sponsored U.S. athletes is Tyson Gay, who failed to advance to the finals of the 100 meters because of injury.
Said Jervoe: “We would have loved him to have made the final. We love working with him, but what he represents is his personality and character. … We will have a partnership as we’re going forward.”
Omega’s TOP Sponsorship Deal Is Different
The International Olympic Committee’s TOP sponsors pay their money and take their chances. According to IOC documents, the 12 sponsors contribute $866 million in revenue during this quadrennial of Torino and Beijing.
But Omega President Stephen Urquhart, in an interview with SBJ’s Beijing Bureau, explained some details of his company’s arrangement, and it’s a unique one.
He explained that Omega has two different deals with the IOC. In one, the IOC pays Omega for its timing services at Olympic Games venues.
“It’s not value in kind,” Urquhart said. “There’s a service which we give and they pay for it. It’s a big figure.”
Then, Omega and the IOC have a separate marketing and royalty deal, in which Omega can use the five-rings logo on its watches and in other marketing avenues. Omega is the official timekeeper of the Olympics.
Urquhart refused to disclose how the deals mesh and whether Omega is paid more by the IOC than it pays in sponsorship fees.
“We sell them a service that they would have to buy anyway,” he said. “They could do without Coke. They could have Pepsi here. It doesn’t make any difference for the Games. They couldn’t take another watch brand that didn’t have the incredible system that we have to time the Games. Impossible.”
Softball Lobbying Hard For Reinstatement
International Softball Federation President Don Porter has become a high-level international sports lobbyist.
Softball will be dropped from the Olympic program after this tournament. But Porter, long the head of U.S. Softball, is working to convince IOC members to return softball to the Games for 2016.
Porter said the ISF’s “Back Softball” campaign will cost about $2 million in its run-up to another IOC vote next year. That’s a lot of money for an international federation that has an annual budget of only $2 million.
But keeping the sport in the Games is a lucrative proposition. Porter said the IOC shared $6.7 million with the ISF after the Athens Olympics in 2004. Some of that IOC money is being used, of course, to help fund the reinstatement effort, which includes public relations efforts such as giving $1.5 million in equipment to poorer nations to help them begin softball programs.
Porter’s passionate lobbying efforts will reach a certain crescendo Wednesday when IOC President Jacques Rogge is expected to attend a softball game here.
Besides softball’s reinstatement, the IOC is pondering the reinstatement of baseball and the inclusion of squash, karate, golf, roller-skating sports and rugby, some of which, Porter said, are spending far more than softball to travel, pay for presentations and other public relations materials.
