Olympics Overrun by Commercial Interests: Report

Commercialism is compromising the principles of the contemporary Olympic Games, a report by the advocacy group Commercial Alert contends.

In the report, released this week in the advocacy group’s Multinational Monitor magazine, the group charges that “omnipresent commercial messaging and branding” by the 63 companies supporting the Olympics as sponsors or partners is “undermining the professed ideals of the Olympic Games.”

The report estimates that those companies will spend between $4 billion and $6 billion in Beijing alone.

The “Commercial Olympics” report notes that the 12 top tier companies sponsoring the Beijing Summer Olympics have paid fees of $866 million to the International Olympic Committee, with more than 100 corporations contributing an undetermined amount of cash to the U.S. Olympic Committee or U.S. national teams.

Commercial Alert is attempting to raise public consciousness about the commercialism surrounding the Beijing games, while proposing reforms to the sponsorship process.

“Our purpose in issuing the report is to offer a critical perspective on what is common knowledge and offer recommendations to cut back the advertisements and sponsorships that are connected to the Olympics,” said Robert Weissman, Commercial Alert managing director.

The report also urges the IOC and other Olympic bodies to refuse sponsorships from alcohol and junk food companies, as well as companies associated with gross human rights violations.

“A lot of companies, from our point of view, do a lot of bad things. But there should be some threshold especially given the Olympics focus on human values,” Weissman said.

The most allegedly egregious human rights violators Commercial Alert cites are two Chinese companies, Chinese National Petroleum Co. and Sino Petroleum, which constructed an oil pipeline in Sudan. It charges that CNPC supplied tanks, fighter planes and machine guns to the Sudanese government in its violent repression of ethnic groups in the country.

Weissman said repeated attempts to elicit responses on the issue of commercial overkill from the IOC, USOC and U.S. national teams only drew responses from the U.S. Canoeing and Kayak team and the National Basketball Association, on behalf of the U.S. Men’s Basketball Team.

A primary concern for Commercial Alert is the “deplorable” working conditions tolerated by companies such as Adidas, Speedo and Nike, which is a supplier for the U.S. basketball team. In part of a longer statement, NBA spokesman Carmine Tiso told Commercial Alert: “USA Basketball, as represented by the NBA, is committed to conducting its business in a socially responsible and ethical manner and maintains its own licensee and supplier code of conduct that requires licensees and their contractors to share that commitment.”

On the IOC’s policy of declining liquor sponsorships, Commercial Alert points out that Anheuser-Busch, Tsing-Tao and Janying beers are Olympic sponsors, along with Jose Cuervo, which sponsors the U.S. Soccer Federation.

It further points out that two primary Olympics sponsors, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, sell unhealthy foods and enjoy “artificial monopolies” in their respective sponsorship categories at the Beijing venues.

The full report is available at www.multinationalmonitor.org/2008olympics/TheCommercialGames.pdf

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