Keeping a Client’s Olympic Connection in the News After the Closing Ceremonies

The 2026 Winter Olympic Games are now history. And as is usual after an Olympics, the memories do not linger on. That’s because unlike popular American sports such as football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, the Olympic Games are a one-and-done event, although an expensive one for sports marketers.

Which begs a question. Might brands be better off doing their own thing in a small pond rather than being one of many in an ocean full of brands at a mega sporting event?

With TV commercials for mega sports events costing as high as $8 million for a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl, not including production costs, and TV commercials for the Olympics also costing millions, the question that will again be debated among marketing specialists is, are marketers getting their money’s worth by spending millions of dollars to advertise on events like the Super Bowl and Olympics?

“Hard to tell” is the only unbiased true answer, because when a commodity product brand gets a quick boost from a TV ad, it also uplifts other brands in the category. In effect, competitive brands that do not advertise are getting a free ride, the same way lesser-known politicians benefit when a more popular one on the same ballot wins overwhelmingly.

Surveys reveal that because of the clutter of commercials during the Super Bowl and Olympics, relatively few people remember which brands are sponsoring which commercials. Studies also show that the boost brands get from sponsoring those ads is short-lived.

That so few people could remember the names of sponsors was not news to me. Client surveys from a multiyear sports marketing campaign that I managed for nine years, which consistently received prominent earned media coverage with sponsor recognition and talking points, revealed that because of the clutter of brand sports promotions, after a few days relatively few people remembered which brand was underwriting which promotion. Eventually, when Major League Baseball wanted to increase the rights fee, the client dropped the program.

Is the same true of the Super Bowl and Olympics? My guess would be yes, because there are similar undeniable aspects to both events. Even though, as a PR person, I’ve been involved in both Super Bowl and Olympic campaigns, I’ve always favored a more targeted, less expensive approach than one that simply counts eyeballs.

In my opinion, the ideal would be for a brand to be the sole sponsor of a self-created event and supplement it with a savvy PR and publicity program that can continue to build brand recognition throughout the year, unlike the Super Bowl, Olympics, and other sports mega events that have a short shelf life.

Creating your own newsworthy, publicizable sports marketing program can achieve what every client wants from a sponsored program: positive, continuous earned media coverage that multimillion-dollar Super Bowl and Olympic brand campaigns are hard-pressed to deliver.

But let’s face it. PR agencies are poor cousins to the ad agencies that plan multimillion-dollar ad campaigns for clients, which often include advertising on mega sporting events. So when push comes to shove, the ad agencies usually get their way.

To me, it never made sense why clients would spend millions of dollars on Olympic promotions and not allocate even an infinitesimal amount of that money to a PR or publicity program that would keep those associations in the public’s mind during non-Olympic years.

And it’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel to create programs that generate positive publicity in the U.S., which can also be used by companies in non-American markets.

Savvy PR practitioners should be able to craft a program that keeps a client’s Olympic connection in the media spotlight for as long as a client is willing to bankroll it.

Example: A simple approach that would attract national and local media attention would be to have Olympians partner with youth organizations and conduct sports clinics in cities throughout the U.S. I would suggest holding the clinics in the afternoon and, in the evening, having an Olympian attend a dinner with important client business customers. For Super Bowl sponsors, substitute a foosball player for the Olympian.

There are many other programs that a media-wise PR team can craft to extend a client’s mega sports event connection. And they can be done at a fraction of the cost of paying for the right to say “official sponsor.”