Thursday, May 17, 2012

Financial Sponsors and the London Olympics




Arguably the most active marketing and biggest spending around the London Olympics this summer comes from the financial services sector.  Four financial firms have signed on as sponsors of the U.S. Olympic Committee: Citi for retail banking, Visa as the worldwide credit card sponsor, TD Ameritrade as the online-broker, and Deloitte as the professional services sponsor.

The reason financial service companies are so quick to align with the Olympics is simple.  Viewers with household incomes over $100,000 are 400% more likely to watch five or more hours of Olympics coverage daily than viewers with average household incomes between $50,000-$100,000.  It’s these same affluent consumers the financial firms are spending millions of dollars to reach.

A US Olympic Committee sponsorship alone costs $10-15 million and that’s before companies spend another $10-15 million on marketing and advertising.  The key for these complimentary, but competing firms will be finding a way to stand out in the Olympic marketing clutter.  The ones that do will see their investments pay off for shareholders.  The one that don’t will have made a multimillion-dollar mistake.