2012 Olympics organisers expect to beat sponsorship targets
London 2012 organisers have said they would hit the top end of their sponsorship target of between £600m and £700m, insisting that the global economic slump had not dampened the corporate appetite for involvement in the Olympics.
Paul Deighton, the chief executive of Locog, has predicted that it will exceed its sponsorship target. Photograph: Tom Shaw/Getty Images
Unveiling UPS as its 22nd sponsor, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) chief executive, Paul Deighton, said it was on track to meet or exceed the £700m barrier. He said the new deal took the total raised so far to £550m and that the remainder would be achieved by tying up a string of further tier-two and tier-three deals, worth at least £20m and £10m respectively.
Organisers were able to lock in the majority of major sponsors before the worst effects of the global slump became clear. There were fears 18 months ago that the last batch of deals would be more difficult to wrap up, but Deighton said negotiations had not been adversely affected.”There is nothing quite like the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games. It has got a set of values attached to it which business would really, really like to be associated with,” he said. “In the modern world, that kind of value-based association is much more powerful than a traditional advert.”
