The Olympian Games That Companies Play

By Peter Stoler/Ottawa

Back in 1928, Coca-Cola sent off 1,000 cases of its "official soft drink" on the ship taking the American team to the Amsterdam Games. Probably seemed like a grand gesture at the time. This year, just for the privilege of calling itself the official soft drink, Coke paid a cool $3 million. The Olympics went to Los Angeles in 1984, learned all about how to cut deals and sell fantasy, and made a $215 million profit. The organizers of the Calgary Games have merely taken a leaf (a maple leaf, of course) from the Los Angeles book.

That is why some 1,300 men and women charged with timing, judging and overseeing the Games are not the only ones able to call themselves official these next two weeks. Twenty-two large U.S. and Canadian companies are on hand as "official sponsors." An additional 26 are there as "official suppliers." And 41 more are "official licensees," peddling everything from Olympic-logo sweatshirts to figure-skating Barbie dolls. "These Games won't just break even," says David Shanks, corporate-relations manager for O.C.O. '88, the Olympic organizing committee. "They will make money." As much as $23 million.

To solve what O.C.O. Chairman Frank King called the "problem of financing the Games without hitting the taxpayers," the committee approached major American and Canadian firms, offering for $2 million and up exclusive rights to use and market the Olympics in their industry as well as special privileges at the Games. So nothing but Coke-owned drinks are available at the Olympic venues or in the athletes' Village. Kodak, the official film, won the right to operate the center that is processing the millions of rolls professional and amateur photographers shoot at the Games. IBM got to provide the computers that officials and athletes are using to check the schedule of events as well as the times and scores recorded. Visa is the Games' official credit card; ^ American Express, MasterCard and Diners Club cards are thus not being accepted at any Olympic ticket office or venue (though they find ready acceptance at Calgary hotels and restaurants). General Motors has the right to supply all the vehicles used by Olympic officials, and because GM cars are getting preferential parking at Olympic venues, many auto-rental agencies rushed to replace the Fords they had been using with Chevrolets, Buicks and Oldsmobiles. *

The companies calculate that they will reap enormous benefits from their participation, some in direct sales, some in goodwill. Labatt Brewing has been getting almost unqualified public approval for its program of bringing the parents of Canadian athletes to Calgary to watch their children perform. Petro-Canada put up $35.6 million, on top of a $4.3 million sponsorship fee, to stage the trans-Canada torch relay that ended with the lighting of the Olympic flame Saturday.The company expects to realize a 2% increase in market share and an additional $221 million in annual revenues as a result.

Official suppliers, which paid $500,000 each for the designation, are profitably promoting their contribution. The athletes consequently are feasting on meats provided by Canada Safeway, eating bread baked by Weston Foods and spreading it with Skippy peanut butter or Hellmann's mayonnaise from Best Foods. They sleep on Simmons mattresses and stoke up on Crispy Crunch candy bars, made by a Weston subsidiary. Any photographs commissioned by O.C.O. will be shot with Canon cameras.

And with no others. Having guaranteed exclusivity, O.C.O. has been keeping its promise with all the ferocity, and discrimination, of a hurtling bobsled -- suing or threatening to sue anybody suspected of misusing the word Olympic or 217 different logos and trademarks. Charging an infringement of its licensing rights to the five-ring symbol, O.C.O. unsuccessfully tried to enjoin Maclean's, a weekly Canadian magazine, from publishing a special Olympic edition. It even went after an Ottawa eatery known as the Olympic Diner and the twelve-year-old Olympic Drilling Co., an Ottawa-based water well-drilling firm. "These people are crazy," said Olympic's Gisele Renwick.

Canada's Fitness and Sport Minister, former Skater Otto Jelinek, apparently agreed, and asked O.C.O. to "cease and desist" from harassing small companies that were clearly not hurting the licensing efforts. O.C.O. has taken added lumps over public suspicions that it is elitist -- giving sponsors & preferential treatment on tickets and accommodations, being more interested in playing host to such visiting royalty as Norway's King Olav, Spain's Juan Carlos and Monaco's Prince Rainier than it is in the people of the host city. "I hope the Games do show a profit," says Reg Brown, 44, a rancher outside Calgary. "But I'll be interested in seeing how much of that profit goes toward helping amateur athletes, as they've promised it will."

Such criticism stings O.C.O., which insists that it has simply been trying to find a way to avoid the sea of red ink that Montreal faced after the 1976 Games. Because O.C.O. almost certainly will achieve that, as long as most sponsors believe they will get their money's worth, the Olympic marriage with commercialism will continue. Organizers of this summer's Seoul Olympics have already pulled in $180 million worth of sponsorships.

FOOTNOTE: *SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and TIME International are the 1988 Games' official sponsor magazines.