You'll never know how much you miss something until it's gone, right? Well, that seems to be the case for the NHL, who, after spending months fiddling around with contract negotiations and delaying the start of the season, is seeing record viewership numbers for televised games. 

The abbreviated season finally got under way in January (after Nike reminded the big wigs at the NHL who's really the boss). But NBC Sports had a few tricks up their sleeve to ramp up excitement in a shorter amount of time. 

Viewership during the regular season went up 18 percent over last year, Forbes reports, making this the most-watched regular season in 19 years. Seven of the top eight NHL telecasts of the season came during NHL Sports Network’s new Wednesday Night Rivalry, which featured games between some of the league’s longest and feistier rivals. It drew some of the larger sponsors, too, including Discover and Verizon.Continue reading...

It's estimated that more than 10,000 athletes from 200-plus nations will be competing in this summer’s Olympics in London, but there will be an even fiercer competition going on behind the scenes.

Ambush marketing, the art of getting your corporation’s name attached to an event without spending the kazillions involved in officially doing so, could be entering its heyday with the London Games — even though organizers and lawmakers have made all sorts of rules and regulations against such things happening in order to protect the companies that have already forked over big bucks (and powerful pounds) to be involved.Continue reading...

It’s been 27 years since gas leaked out of a Union Carbide pesticide plant in India and killed about 15,000 people. It also injured an additional 500,000 and is still causing health problems in the area today, according to the Indian government.

Union Carbide is owned by Dow Chemical, which happens to be one of the sponsors of next summer’s London Olympics, a fact that is not bringing smiles to many people in India. And Dow isn’t just any sponsor. It is the one that the London Organizing Committee has selected to sponsor  a “wrap that will envelope the main Olympic Stadium,” according to the London Telegraph.

“Victims of the accident, as well as former Indian Olympians and officials, have been pressuring Olympic organizers to drop Dow as a sponsor,” the Associated Press reports. “Less than two weeks ago, protesters in Bhopal burned an effigy of the head of the Olympic organizing committee, Sebastian Coe,” who won four Olympic medals for running in the 1980 and 1984 Games. Also burned in effigy was Indian Olympic Association president Vijay Kumar Malhotra, the Telegraph reports. 

One person who is also not excited about Dow’s involvement is a member of the organizing committee, Sir Robin Wales. "I believe the decision to accept sponsorship from Dow Chemical and in particular the decision to have that company so prominently connected to the iconic Olympic Stadium is worthy of a further review,” Wales said, the Telegraph reports. “I am disappointed by the decision not to look again at the deal."

Coe, however, is all for Dow’s involvement.Continue reading...

In the months leading up to this fall’s Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, there was much ado about the unauthorized piggyback practice of ambush marketing by non-sponsors.

New regulations and practices were put in place to be sure that any brand that hadn’t paid a massive chunk to sponsor the matches found even the teensiest way to affiliate itself with the event. The preparation for such a possible catastrophe seemed to put ambush marketing on par with terrorism.

Other than a bunch of scantily clad gals in stilettos handing out flyers for a strip club after one particular match, the RWC went ambush-free.

Now a much bigger event is coming, next year’s Summer Olympics in London (which organizers refuse to identify with its XXX Roman numerals, for some reason), and nobody wants any big-spending sponsors to be outdone by some fancy bit of ambush marketing.Continue reading...

Losing the final of your sport’s biggest global event after nearly winning in overtime is not an easy thing to live through, but getting boatload of cash out of the deal has got to make that bitter pill a little easier to swallow in retrospect.

That’s where Abby Wambach now sits, a few months after the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team lost the World Cup in a penalty-kick shootout after she had scored an overtime goal that was seemingly for the win before Japan somehow equalized. The U.S. was ready to love this team as it had the women of the World Cup-winning 1999. That team has a few members whose names live on: the star Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain (who famously pulled her own shirt off after scoring the winning goal), the tough vet Michelle Akers, and Julie Foudy, who has helped herself by becoming an analyst on ESPN.

For this summer’s team, the two names that will live on for some time are likely to be Wambach’s and goalie Hope Solo, who seemed to catch the fascination of America during the World Cup run. She broadened her fame by taking a stint on Dancing With the Stars, but hasn’t hooked into the same kind of sponsorship dollars that Wambach has, according to BusinessWeek.Continue reading...

Want to get your brand name all over London during next summer’s Olympics without spending hundreds of millions to be an official sponsor of the event? Don’t feel like risking arrest with some stealth ambush marketing at the 2012 Summer Games?

Millions of visitors will be roaming the streets of London next summer during the Games of the XXX Olympiad, and they'll be needing a lift, which is why advertisers are looking to taxicab advertising to create a moving experience for their brands. Consider it a (literally) mobile marketing platform.Continue reading...

As London's Olympics organizers celebrate the one-year countdown to the 2012 Summer Games, BMW has embarked on one of the most extensive and important sponsorships of an Olympic team in the history of the movement.

But the German luxury automaker isn’t backing young swimmers or milers from Deutschland — it has become the sole premium automotive sponsor of Team USA for the 2012 Summer Olympics as part of a six-year overall sponsorship deal with the team.

The brand is also the official automotive partner overall for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the official mobility sponsor, with an Olympics bike as part of its 2012 fleet.Continue reading...

Among the Olympics sponsors celebrating the 365-day countdown to the start of the London 2012 summer games, Adidas taped this promo with rapper Snoop Dogg. The spot's description:

Snoop Dogg and Warren G joined British triple jumper Phillips Idowu in a 3 on 3 basketball match against GB basketballers in the Olympic borough of Greenwich, London, to mark the one year to go countdown to the London 2012 Olympic Games. Snoop Dogg is all in, Warren G is all in, Idowu is all in. London 2012, adidas is all in.

The London 2012 site is sponsoring a Twitter promotion today, inviting fans from around the world to "fill its stadium" with tweets. According to Marketing Week, 2012 sponsors running "one year to go" promotions in the UK include BP, Lloyds Bank, British Airways and Holiday Inn:Continue reading...