For this summer’s Olympics in London, Adidas is listed as a partner. Four years from now, though, its biggest rival may be holding that title.

ESPN reports that Nike is exploring the idea of becoming an official sponsor of the Games by 2016, when the world’s best heptathletes and canoers, among others, will head to Rio de Janeiro. 

Nike already has a slew of agreements in place with different Olympic and sports-federation governing bodies around the globe. In the U.S., for example, Nike sponsors the both the national basketball and the track and field teams, and has deals in place to put its golf ball-inspired track and field apparel (at right) on athletes from Germany, China and Russia too.

"We look at the Summer Games as one of the biggest opportunities we have to introduce new products and technologies," said Charlie Denson, president of the Nike brand, to ESPN. "We've always focused on the athlete. The misperception might be that we don't spend time with the federations or the organizing committees or things like that.”

The Olympics always provide a battleground for sports-apparel brands since the companies also sponsor so many athletes who are at the Games. It can likely get confusing for even the athletes themselves as to when they can wear the gear of their sponsor and when they need to wear the gear provided by the team.Continue reading...

The way the world communicates with one another is ever-evolving as new technologies continue to appear and social media continues to introduce new avenues of expression. With that, brands are always finding new ways to touch their customers and all of the classic branding rules are being tossed out the window.

Olympic sponsorship has long been a way for major brands to reach consumers every few years, but international Olympic executives are looking to possibly shift how the model works in order to embrace this new world.

The sponsorship model now in place brings in $1 billion, according to the Financial Times, but the IOC is planning to “take a step back” and re-assess the sponsorship strategy going forward.Continue reading...

The London 2012 Summer Olympics organizers are getting ready to do battle against ambush marketers, the stealth marketing and advertising that undermines official sponsors' efforts. It's an issue that's top of mind for LOCOG — the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games — and social networks are ready to help.

“Twitter has agreed to prevent brands from using the social network for Olympic 'ambush marketing' attempts,” according to eConsultancy. LOCOG has signed £670m ($1 billion) in sponsorship deals so it doesn’t want any of those partners getting upset about nonsponsors stealing their thunder during the Games.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...

Coke vs. Pepsi. Ali vs. Frazier. Godzilla vs. Mothra. Add another battle of serious rivals to the list: Samsung and Nokia are going at each other like two heavyweights in the 15th round these days in India, where they top the handheld marketplace.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...

In the months leading up to the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand that kicked off on Sept. 9 and finishes up this Sunday with a final match between the host country and France, the organizers did everything imaginable to be extra doubly sure that there wouldn’t be one itty bitty ounce of ambush marketing that took place at the festivities. Event organizers went so far to protect sponsors of the event, it felt like other types of security might be falling by the wayside.

Other than a few brochures handed out in the “clean zone” around one arena by scantily clad gals from a strip bar in Wellington, so far, so good. No crazy ambushes like the 36 orange-clad women one Dutch brewery sent to a World Cup game in South Africa to get the brand’s name into the minds of millions without spending the millions that Budweiser did to sponsor the event. Or even peaceful ones like the free hot-chocolate truck at the Vancouver Winter Olympics run by a rival credit-card company to event sponsor Visa. 

At least Rugby World Cup sponsor Heineken must be happy because it just announced that it was going to throw more cash in and extend its sponsorship to the 2015 RWC in England.Continue reading...

Brands including Microsoft, Land Rover, BlackBerry, and Toshiba have paid big bucks to be the sponsors of the Rugby World Cup, which is currently underway in New Zealand. The country and organization made a very big deal this summer about how they are going to do everything possible to curtail any little inkling of ambush marketing in order to protect the corporations that were shelling out to be officially part of the fun.

Now the RWC is getting its first test and it’s not from any corporate giant that has creatively found a way to sneak its logo into RWC matches. It’s from a strip bar.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that one such establishment in Wellington, NZ, sent out “scantily clad women in stilettos and ‘All Blacks’ uniforms emblazoned with silver ferns” to hand out two-for-one flyers to match attendees in the wake of the first match the town hosted during the event: South Africa v. Wales on Sept. 11.Continue reading...