Visa has expanded its aggressive Olympic sports marketing strategy yet again by locking in a higher profile with USA Gymnastics, beginning in 2005.
Through the Beijing Olympic year of 2008, the sport’s national championships will be rebranded as The Visa Championships. The multimillion-dollar renewal of its USA Gymnastics sponsorship marks a shift in the company’s view of America’s gymnastics fortunes, which appear to be rebounding from a medals shutout at the 2000 Sydney Games.
Visa’s new agreement ends its title sponsorship of the gymnastics American Cup event (since 1997) in favor of owning the title of the national championships, said USA Gymnastics senior vice president Steve Penny. The organization had been unable to secure a title sponsor of its premier event since financial services provider John Hancock walked away after 2000.
Television was the major catalyst behind Visa’s renewal. Beginning next year, USA Gymnastics has a deal, previously concluded, with NBC Sports that allocates two one-hour prime-time programming slots for the championships, in which Visa acquired ad units as part of its renewal.
Visa, meanwhile, also grabbed title sponsorship of next month’s championships in a separate deal. The event will be titled the Visa U.S. Gymnastics Championships.
Along with gymnastics, Visa recently renewed its USA Track and Field sponsorship through 2008 and is a sponsor of the coming Olympic swimming team trials. These all are supplemental to a roughly $100 million commitment in the next two Olympic cycles (2005-2012) as a global Olympic Games sponsor in the consumer payment cards category.
CAR CHASE: The U.S. Olympic Committee has more than $405 million in sponsorship revenue under contract for 2005-2008, Chief Executive Jim Scherr recently confirmed. Most are renewals of existing deals with USOC top-tier sponsors (partners), midtier sponsors and suppliers. Scherr said 13 renewals are in so far.
Three top-tiers remain missing from that count: AT&T, ChevronTexaco and General Motors. Of those, only GM is in negotiations that can be described as continuing.
Meanwhile, fixation on Athens’ Games might not preclude Beijing 2008 organizers (the Chinese government) from announcing sponsor deals in early summer.
Automotive, banking, petroleum, telephone and wireless telecom are the hot categories. China is anticipating rights fees approaching $100 million, or nearly double what global Olympic sponsors pay.
“Depending on your product category,” said Rob Prazmark, president of IMG Olympic sales, “a [market] share point gained over the next eight years in that country could be worth billions of dollars.”
GLOBE SPINNING: Coca-Cola will hand out samples of its just launched low-carb/low-cal C2 cola when the 2004 Olympic torch passes through Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York and St. Louis. Coke and Samsung are sponsoring the relay, the first to send an Olympic torch on a global journey. … NYC2012 named Santa Monica, Calif., architectural firm Morphosis as designer of the proposed Olympic Village in Queens. Morphosis was one of five finalists, and one of only two U.S. firms. The other: New York-based Smith-Miller + Hawkinson. … USOC media services guru Bob Condron will be inducted into the College Sports Information Directors of America Hall of Fame on June 30. … After 10 years, International Figure Skating magazine is out of business after parent company Ashton International was placed in receivership by a Massachusetts superior court. Publisher Mark Lund said a former prospective investor now owns rights to two Ashton magazines (including IFS), a book title and annual cruise event, after paying $45,000 to a court-appointed trustee who had discretion to liquidate.
Steve Woodward can be reached at swoodward@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
