McDonald's is set to become the latest worldwide sponsor of the 2002 Winter Games.
The deal is expected to entice other companies to sign up, bringing much-needed cash to the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, said Mark Lewis, head of the joint marketing partnership between SLOC and the U.S. Olympic Committee."The name McDonald's represents one of the premier companies in the United States, so when you have top-notch companies sign up, it's just further confirmation these will be great Games and top-notch companies will stand behind them," Lewis said.
Rob Prazmark, head of Olympic sales and marketing for IMG, the New York-based company hired to help sell sponsorships for 2002, agreed. "The timing is so perfect," Prazmark said. "It's a big Olympic love-fest."
The announcement is scheduled Tuesday at a McDonald's in Taylorsville. The president of the fast-food chain, Alan Feldman, and other company officials were traveling to Utah Monday and were unavailable for comment.
The company is the seventh worldwide sponsor announced for the 2002 Winter Games, joining Coca-Cola, Sports Illustrated and Time magazines, VISA, Kodak, John Hancock insurance and the SEMA Group, a European computer company.
Xerox has also signed, but has not yet made its sponsorship public. Talks are ongoing with Samsung, Panasonic and United Parcel Service, the other current international-level sponsors whose deals expire after the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney.
Such sponsors bring in just less than $10 million apiece to the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Although details of the contracts are never released, the price of a worldwide sponsorship is believed to be about $55 million.
SLOC is already counting on money from 11 worldwide sponsorships, meaning the McDonald's deal won't affect the revenue shortfall in the $1.32 billion budget for the Games, mostly recently reported at $83 million.
But the worldwide deals are valuable to SLOC because they encourage other companies to sign on as national-level sponsors. Those are the sponsors needed to close the budget gap, since SLOC only splits those revenues with the USOC.
McDonald's will be the official restaurant for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City and the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece. The company was a national-level sponsor of the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.
Lewis said the McDonald's deal means Big Macs and supersize fries will be available at the athletes village at the University of Utah as well as at the media center in the Salt Palace.
There are also discussions under way for McDonald's to sponsor a world youth camp in Salt Lake City during the 2002 Games. SLOC had hoped to get out of hosting the event, to save money and staff.
McDonald's also has advertised its association with the Olympics heavily, just as many of the other international-level sponsors do. Such publicity will be welcomed by SLOC, which is still shaking off the scandal surrounding Salt Lake City's Olympic bid.
At one point, Olympic officials feared losing big-name sponsors like McDonald's because of the scandal. "They, like every one of our partners, were concerned because of the events of the scandal," said Chris Welton, an official of the IOC's marketing arm.
Welton said the companies have been satisfied the public still supports the Games.
E-mail: lisa@desnews.com