Former USOC sponsor BP will return to the American Olympic movement, but in a diminished capacity, signing deals to sponsor six US Paralympic teams through '20. In the new deal, BP will help cover training and travel costs of the six Paralympic national teams managed directly by the USOC: cycling, swimming, track and field, alpine skiing, nordic skiing and snowboarding. BP is already a sponsor of the Int'l Paralympic Committee through '20. “This sponsorship underscores our commitment to their success, along with our broader commitment to America, where we invest more than in any other country,” BP America President & Chair John Mingé said in a statement. The reworked relationship means the energy category is open for the USOC, along with commercial banking, beer, hotels and online brokerages. BP does not get the rights to the Olympic rings or Team USA Paralympic marks in the deal, only the IP of the individual teams. Terms were not disclosed, but the new Paralympic team-level deals are presumably worth a small fraction of the cost of BP’s full-fledged sponsorship of the USOC, which was worth more than $3M annually. BP’s prior deal expired at the end of '16 after six years. In recent years, BP had put special emphasis on the Paralympics, becoming the first USOC sponsor ever to sign more Paralympians than Olympians in '16. The USOC’s prospects to replace BP in the energy category are unclear. Along with general sales challenges facing the Olympics, the benchmark price of crude oil in the U.S. stood at $45.72 per barrel yesterday, down 42% from the price on the day BP last renewed in '11. George Bauernfeind, the longtime manager of the BP Olympics and Paralympics sponsorship programs, left the company earlier this year as it became apparent its Olympic program would be smaller going forward. He is now an independent strategic marketing consultant.
PORTFOLIO EVOLUTION COMPLETE: The USOC’s portfolio evolution at the end of the '16 cycle is now complete. Of the 26 sponsors it entered the Rio Games with, the USOC successfully renewed 19 of them. Another, BMW, was replaced by Toyota’s global rights deal, and six did not renew -- BP, Hilton, Budweiser, Citi, TD Ameritrade. During the year, it added three new sponsors: Comcast, Mondelez and MilikPEP.
