Olympic Sponsorship article – EFMA

Client: Visa Europe

Visa’s Olympic vision

The Olympic Games are without doubt the greatest sporting event in the world and everything about them is massive. At Beijing in 2008, more than 10,000 hours of broadcasting pumped the latest moments of hope and glory to something approaching five billion viewers across the world. Hundreds of thousands of tourists flocked to the host city to witness and breathe the air surrounding the greatest show on earth. The Olympic Games put human passion, energy, inspirational athleticism, and a simple kind of age-old national pride to the fore.

It is small wonder that Visa has remained one of the top sponsors of the Olympic Games for more than 22 years and a sponsor of the Paralympic Games for seven years. While all such sponsorships involve a learning curve, we have had time to hone and refine our sponsorship strategy, and to develop skills and promotional templates that make the very most of this exceptional event. This sponsorship has become the cornerstone of Visa’s business growth in the past two decades. All Visa Europe’s members can and do benefit from a direct association with the world’s favourite sporting event and we have consistently seen an increase in the return on its not inconsiderable sponsorship investment. There are several good reasons why Visa and the Olympics have become such a snug fit.

As the world’s biggest sporting event, the Olympic Games provides Visa with an unparalleled opportunity to promote our brand, to drive revenue and to reinforce preference for Visa products and services at an international and local level. The Olympic Games’ broad demographic appeal complements Visa’s wide product offering and each new Games is a great opportunity to showcase innovations which are likely to become the future payment technologies. For example, London 2012 is almost certainly going to be the forum for showcasing the latest in contactless payment technology. While this has already been launched in London in 2007 and is being piloted in several European countries, London 2012 will provide an excellent opportunity for us to demonstrate its full effectiveness.

Of great importance, is the fact this sponsorship delivers tangible business value for our members, cardholders and merchants. This can take the form of direct promotional activity and indirect association. For Beijing, Visa Europe members ran 45 Olympic-themed promotions, each one tailored to particular objectives such as driving card usage, winning new business and supporting new payment innovations. Visa has marketing rights with every National Olympic Committee so that the Games become relevant in specific regions across Europe. Research conducted by us clearly indicates that cardholders who are aware of Visa’s sponsorship of the Games generally feel good about this and, as a group, they use their Visa cards than those who are not aware...