The first corporate sponsor for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City will be Coca-Cola, Olympic officials are scheduled to announce here today.
The value of the deal is being described as "substantially more" than the $40 million that the soft-drink company paid to sponsor the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.Utah organizers can expect to receive about 15-20 percent of the total, with the rest going to the International Olympic Committee, national Olympic committees throughout the world and organizers of future Games.
Tom Welch, head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, said he hadn't expected to leave Atlanta with any corporate sponsors signed. "I was surprised," Welch said. "This is good news for Salt Lake."
And for the Olympics, period. There has been much speculation that the bombing of Centennial Olympic Park last Saturday would reduce the value of the Games to corporate marketers.
Some big sponsors, such as IBM, have been associated with major problems linked to the Games. IBM created the computerized information system, Info '96, that failed to deliver event results to the world's media.
"This establishes the right kind of precedent," Welch said. "It shows the continuing commitment of those sponsors who have made the Olympic Games viable."
Coca-Cola has been an Olympic sponsor since the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. The Atlanta-based company has also been part of the IOC's marketing program, known as TOP, since it was created in 1985.
The program gives companies world-wide rights to use the Olympic rings in their advertising during a four-year period encompassing both a summer and a winter Games - currently Atlanta and the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.
Salt Lake City's marketing partner for the TOP program will be the city selected next year to host the 2004 Summer Games. But Welch said the deal announced Friday will be for an unprecedented eight years, through 2008.
Other current TOP sponsors are likely to continue with the program, Olympic officials say. They are Bausch & Lomb, IBM, John Hancock insurance, Kodak, Panasonic, Sports Illustrated, UPS, Visa and Xerox.
These sponsorships are the top level of corporate support for the Olympics, but organizing committees make more money from national sponsors and suppliers.
Utah organizers can't start signing those sponsors until a deal is negotiated with the U.S. Olympic Committee, which will get a share of whatever money comes in.
The Salt Lake Organizing Committee hopes to earn more than 40 percent of its $1 billion budget from its share of corporate sponsorships. A deal with the USOC has to be finalized by the end of the year.
The deal with Coca-Cola could be just the beginning. In Atlanta, the soft-drink company spent millions more to sponsor the cross-country Olympic torch relay and build a theme park just outside Centennial Olympic Park.
Coca-Cola has had such a strong presence in Atlanta's efforts to organize the 1996 Summer Games that critics have dubbed them the "Coca-Cola Olympics."