Do Olympic sponsorship deals work? Experts weigh in
BNN Bloomberg
As the Beijing Winter Olympics come to a close, corporate sponsors will be reaping the benefits from the marketing dollars spent, according to marketing experts.
As the Beijing Winter Olympics come to a close and Canadian athletes bring home medals or Lululemon swag, corporate sponsors will be reaping the benefits from the marketing dollars spent at the Games, according to marketing experts – and that includes Royal Bank of Canada, the longest-standing corporate sponsor of Canada’s Olympic team.
“Remember, sponsorship is a perceptual thing,” said Norm O'Reilly, dean of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Maine. “[RBC] has built this perception by association that they are Canada's Olympic bank.”
O’Reilly, whose thesis was on sponsorship evaluation, estimated 40 per cent of consumers in G20 countries are influenced by a brand that sponsors an Olympic team.
“There are agencies that will measure brand preference and sponsorship awareness and you can be darn sure that if a brand has renewed [their sponsorship], they’re getting back more than they invest,” he said.
According to the annual Canadian Sponsorship Landscape Study, total industry spend on sponsorships pre-pandemic topped $3 billion. O’Reilly, who is the lead author of the study, notes a key metric is activation, whereby a company promotes its sponsorship via social media posts and commercials starring athletes. “If that’s done effectively, and that’s where agencies come in, it really, really works,” he said.
Organizations have much to gain from sponsor money, with nearly a third of the International Olympic Committee’s revenues sourced from sponsorships, according to O’Reilly, who’s also a former member of the Canadian Paralympic Committee.
