Sainsbury’s signs up as London 2012 sponsor following clash with Coke

Sainsbury’s has inked a deal with the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games to sponsor the Paralympics in 2012. The move comes after a long battle with Coca-Cola over Olympic rights.

Paralympics
Paralympics

Coca-Cola, whose £20m a year deal as a global TOPS Olympic sponsor is with the International Olympic Committee had sought to prevent LOCOG signing up any UK supermarkets as domestic sponsors for the 2012 Olympics, it is believed.

Sources also say that last year, Coca-Cola complained to the IOC that a deal with a UK supermarket would damage its own promotional campaigns in the run-up to the Games.

Its objections were that if a supermarket signed up as an official sponsor it could use the Olympic logo on its own-brand carbonates, juices and water, thus impinging on Coca-Cola’s exclusive rights.

However, in a compromise, Sainsbury’s has signed a deal to sponsor the Paralympic Games only and will use the London 2012 Paralympic Games logo in its marketing activity and not the Olympic rings. Along with Coca-Cola, the global TOPS sponsors are Acer, Atos Origin, General Electric, McDonald’s, Omega, Samsung, Visa and Panasonic. LOCOG’s domestic Tier One partners are Adidas,EDF, BT, BP, Lloyds TSB, British Airways and BMW along with Tier Two supporters Cadbury, Adecco, Cisco, Deloitte, Thomas Cook and UPS.

Among the Tier Three suppliers and provders are agency network McCann Worldgroup, John Lewis, Next, The Nielsen Company and GlaxoSmithKline.

This story first appeared on pitch

 

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