Big sponsors leaving International Olympic Committee over corruption and lack of athlete support

© Copyright – 2024 – Athletics Illustrated

The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) three major Japanese sponsors: Toyota, Panasonic and Bridgestone are ending their support of the Olympic Games.

Apparently, the IOC will focus on the Middle East and India for new sponsorships.

Why are they leaving?

Japanese sponsors have turned away from the Olympics due to the IOC’s handling of the pandemic and rescheduled 2020 Olympic Games to 2021. Lack of spectators during those Games reduced the on-site exposure of the brands. Allegedly corruption scandals were part of the decision. While there may be corruption allegations around the IOC, Japanese sponsors were also found to be in conflict.

A former executive with the Japanese advertising company Dentsu, Haruyuki Takahashi was charged with accepting around 198 million yen ($1.4 million) in bribes in exchange for awarding Olympic contracts for the Tokyo Games in 2021.

The three brands are among 15 Olympic sponsors, which paid more than $2 billion (USD) to the IOC during the recent four-year Olympic cycle.

Toyota Motor Corp. confirmed it would not renew its sponsorship after the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Leading advertising firms Hakuhodo and Tokyu Agency, and the events operators Same Two, Cerespo and Fuji Creative Corp also had charges laid.

Toyota is the only one of the three to publicly announce dissatisfaction with how the IOC distributes sponsorship funds. The company has officially stated that the money is not being used effectively to support athletes and promote sports. Toyota cited the increasingly political nature of the Games and the company’s belief that athletes have been sidelined.

It would be assumed that the IOC will look to the USA for sponsorship as the next cycle focuses on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

The TOP sponsorship program

Already with Coca-Cola in hand, the TOP program is an exclusive niche for Olympic Games events including Youth, Paralympic and Winter Games.

Samsung and Airbnb are also TOP sponsors; see the full list below.

The budget for the Paris Games was set at 4.4 billion euros or 4.83 USD. Ninety-six per cent is privately financed. According to the official budget plan, Olympic host Paris received 1.22 billion euros (1.34B USD) from the IOC. Nearly 750 million came from broadcast and streaming rights, 470 million from partnerships with TOP sponsors. Other partners, primarily from France contributed as much as 1.226 billion euros.

The was an estimated 1.1 billion euros (1.3 USD) from ticketing, 170 million euros (200 million USD) from the hospitality industry and 127 million euros (135 million USD) from product licensing. The remainder of the total sum comes from “other income” and four percent from public funds. Therefore, as per the three Japanese sponsors vacating, ticketing was a significant source of income and importantly brand exposure.

From the top down

Leadership’s influence trickles down throughout organizations. The current president of the IOC is Germany’s Thomas Bach. His reign is coming to an end and the campaign has begun for a new leader. One of the leading candidates is World Athletics president Lord Sebastian Coe from the UK.

Bach has been implicated in supporting Russia’s inclusion into the Games leading up to the 2024 Paris edition, despite almost every level of government and sports management around him disagreeing. He changed his mind twice on whether the world’s largest country with proven systematic doping should be competing internationally. Coe, on the other hand, was steadfast in Russia’s ban to do with the sport of athletics. In the end it came down to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, meanwhile, Bach did not agree commenting that there were many other battles being waged around the globe. At the time there was the Tigray War in Ethiopia, and now there is escalation in the Middle East between Israel, Lebanon and Palestine.

It has been long alleged that the IOC has been involved in corruption. But it is certainly honouring Pierre de Coubertain’s perspective that “All people must be allowed in, without debate, just as all sports must be treated on equal footing, without concern for the fluctuations or caprices of public opinion,” which the IOC has long steered away from. While de Coubertain’s vision is archaic, somewhere between the IOC’s position today, and the Baron’s should be a meeting of the ideal and the forward movement of these Games.

While the IOC continues to be political, and about big money, there are cases where cities have been left with white elephants and certain aspects of businesses left holding the bag, for example in Rio from the 2016 Games.

While Toyota wants the support of athletes, the IOC and Bach have been resolute in not supporting athletes (archaic notion). Coe adopted the novel approach to pay Olympic champions in Paris and to expand the program to Los Angeles.

Perhaps Coe will entice Toyoto to return. Coe cleaned up World Athletics’ tarnished image after the reign of president Lamine Diack and his 16 years of money laundering, extortion and coverups. Perhaps he will clean up the IOC. He was on the FIFA ethics board and knows well how to manage a major organization proven by his leadership with World Athletics.

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