Few events capture worldwide attention, or marketing communications dollars, like the Olympics. All totaled, official sponsorship of the 2004 Games in Athens generated $685.6 million (euro570 million) for the Olympics, accounting for 29 percent of the organizers' budget, according to the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee.¹ The top 11 sponsors paid an estimated $55 million each just to be official sponsors². This figure is in addition to money spent on public relations, advertising and other marketing activities, which usually leveraged sponsorship status. Coca-Cola, for example, was estimated to have spent $140 million on Olympic marketing, including sponsorship and TV ads³. But what did this investment buy them, in terms of media exposure? The following ranks official sponsors by volume of media placements in relation to each company's association with the Olympics.

Based on Internet exposure across more than 6,000 websites worldwide in the month of August, the 11 Olympic sponsors gained varying levels of coverage associated with the event.

Ranked by Internet Exposure

1. McDonald's
2. Visa
3. Sports Illustrated
4. Samsung
5. Coca-Cola
6. Swatch
7. Kodak
8. Panasonic
9. Atos Origin
10. Xerox
11. John Hancock

When considering an individual market, such as the U.S. the picture changes. McDonald's remains in first position, followed by Kodak. However, Coca-Cola moves to third. Some of the major shifts include Sports Illustrated, which gained a high profile due to its own exposure on the Internet but did not do so well in specific references within the Metro Dailies; Samsung, which dropped from fourth to ninth; and Swatch from sixth to eleventh. Xerox was one of the sponsors to gain in share of exposure in the U.S., moving from tenth to fifth.

Ranked by Volume of Articles in the Top 50 Metro Dailies

1. McDonald's
2. Kodak
3. Coca-Cola
4. Visa
5. Xerox
6. Atos Origin
7. Sports Illustrated
8. Panasonic
9. Samsung
10. John Hancock
11. Swatch

¹ Associated Press Newswires , August 30, 2004

² The Oakland Tribune , August 15, 2004

³lbid

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