Media coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina, Italy will take place from February 6 to 22. Olympics coverage is heating up and the crescendo is certain to increase as we approach the end of the year.
NBCUniversal, which will televise the games, has already been hawking it for several weeks. But I’d be willing to bet a few Euros that many Olympic sponsors, the network, public relations and advertising agencies are still using the same old playbook, when new thinking is needed because of the changed media coverage of sporting events.
Together with the traditional media’s increasingly negative reporting about sports and athletes, there is more than enough evidence to throw out the old sports marketing publicity playbooks and demand new sports marketing thinking from PR and marketing firms.
Because controversy is now a frequent element of the sports scene, sponsors should realize that sports promotions are viewed by the media as any other business decisions and that having a prominent athlete lead a sports marketing publicity campaign often does not result in substantially more positive major media coverage containing client talking points, if any. And if the athlete becomes involved in an unsportsmanlike incident, media coverage of it can kill a sports marketing campaign.
Many marketing execs who make the decisions to spend millions of dollars on sports sponsorships often refuse to accept that times have changed and that sports departments at media outlets are no longer considered “toy departments,” as they were when I was a young sports reporter for several New York City dailies. Today, many stories are better suited for the business sections or police blotter reports. But that actuality is largely ignored as public relations and advertising agencies push clients to align with sporting events and prominent athletes, despite the fact that more targeted promotions might produce better results. (I’ve always believed that an important reason for public relations agencies advocating for sports tie-ins is because it doesn’t take much creativity to craft a publicity-oriented program around an event that automatically will be covered by the media. It’s what I label “doing what’s best for the agency, not doing what’s best for the client.”)
Before committing to fund agency-recommended sports publicity programs, clients should consider that in 2014 negative stories about the Sochi Olympics was part of the news budget before, during and after the game’s conclusion; threats of terrorism and Putin’s anti-gay laws made headlines for weeks in all media outlets. Long-planned brand promotional plans had to be curtailed because of outcries against Russia’s policies.
Negative Olympic media coverage at the Rio and Tokyo games reported on the misdoings of The Fédération internationale de football association (FIFA), the U.S. Gymnastics, and the controversy regarding staging the Tokyo Olympics during the Covid-19 pandemic. Largely missing from major media was the coverage that sponsors wanted about their costly promotional plans.
An ongoing negative publicity fountain for decades has been the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarding its propaganda-rich games to authoritarian countries, along with NBCUniversal’s sportswashing of those countries.
Young PR pros might not know that for many years sports marketers just shrugged their shoulders at the negative publicity that the events they were sponsoring received because for decades sponsorship stories were relegated to ad trade books and advertising and marketing columnists of print pubs, which reported on the costs of “buys” and their advertising and public relations programs.
In those days, many marketing execs, who controlled the PR budgets, told me that my priority should be getting coverage in the advertising trades and the ad and marketing columns of major dailies. Not so today. They want coverage in all sections of a publication. Also, in the past, negative aspects of the sports scene were omitted from media coverage on the sports pages. “If it doesn’t happen during an event it’s not a sports story” was often the rationale of even prominent journalists.
(Prior to entering the PR business, as a novice sports reporter for a New York City daily, I wrote a story after witnessing the dangerous unsportsmanlike instructions that a high school coach gave to his football team. It was spiked by my editor because, he said, “It will make the league unhappy.” Today that story would be on page one.)
But because sports have lost its protective journalistic cocoon and are treated like any other big business sponsors have become a frequent part of controversies. “We’re just following the athletes” has become a frequent response when brands are asked about the Olympic Games being awarded to a totalitarian country.
During my more than 35 years on sports marketing accounts, including almost 25 years at Burson-Marsteller (where I played key roles and managed national and international sports and non-sports accounts, and also traveled as a media advisor with high-ranking foreign government officials during the days when B-M was the largest international agency), I always warned clients that if they were considering an athlete as a publicity spokesperson to make certain that the individual had an untarnished past and was well-liked by the media, because the media was the vehicle for gaining client publicity. Now clients and agency personnel also have to be concerned about the tweeting problem, as athletes freely comment about social issues. They have to be aware that an athlete may comment on controversial issues, upsetting clients and consumers.
Because controversy is now a frequent element of the sports scene, sponsors should realize that it’s time to toss the old sports marketing playbook.
New Playbook for Sponsors
Here’s what PR people and sponsors should consider:
- When divvying up budgets, marketers should consider that the media no longer covers up the transgressions of once untouchable mega-stars and that major sport organizations are under constant media scrutiny.
- Companies should always demand that their agencies suggest other more targeted advertising and publicity possibilities to complement their sports sponsorships.
- Companies also should consider reducing sports sponsorships budgets and use some of the money on “good citizen” PR programs that will receive positive publicity in both social media and traditional news outlets. That can produce a “good corporate citizen” image that may help offset a portion of any problems resulting from tie-ins with athletes or sports entities that generate negative coverage.
- Sports sponsors should recognize that effective social media attacks can derail sponsors’ long-planned multi-million dollar promotions.
- Sports marketers should prepare a crisis sports PR plan. They should ask agencies to investigate possible problems that may occur at a sports venue or because of an athlete spokesperson’s comments or behavior and include in all programs suggested client responses. The program should also contain a fast-response plan.
- Sponsors should make certain that sports fanatics are not part of a PR account team. The team should consist of publicity-oriented personnel with marketing and corporate experience who have knowledge of sports but view sports promotions as a marketing tool and corporate good-will vehicle.
- Sponsors should be made aware that gaining earned media related to a mega sporting event has become more difficult as reporters look for cutting-edge newsworthy angles that their editors demand. A prime example was the coverage of the 2023 and 2024 Super Bowls, where stories about betting, racial issues and the health of players were the most covered story lines, as was the relationship between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.
- All agency Olympic account teams should include an individual with crisis communications expertise.
- Sponsors should be made aware that the old tactic of using a retired or current athlete as a publicity spokesperson no longer guarantees coverage and that more creative tactics has to be employed. (But using a retired athlete out of the spotlight for a number of years might generate more positive media coverage than using a current one that the media sees every day.)
- Sponsors should keep an open mind to alternative promotional opportunities and PR people should suggest the options, including ambush marketing ideas.
- PR people should advise clients that big budgets don’t guarantee big publicity
- PR people should tell clients that most earned publicity stories related to a sporting event do not contain product talking points and that a PR program is second banana to advertising.
- Sponsors must recognize that politics and controversy will forever be part of the sports scene and that they can become part of the story at a moment’s notice. They should be prepared for such an eventuality.
- Sponsors of events should realize that despite sport organizations efforts there is no way of preventing successful ambush marketing programs, which are covered by the media despite their not being “official” sponsors.
- And importantly, Olympic marketing sponsors should demand that their PR agencies craft programs that are continually covered, instead of ones that have a short shelf life. Baseball, football and basketball are covered by the media in the U.S. year-round. There is no reason that Olympic-related sponsorships should disappear from the media scene shortly after an Olympics is concluded. A savvy PR program can extend the client-Olympic association nationally and internationally for as long as a sponsor wants. Sponsors should demand that PR firms suggest one.
While frequent sponsors of sporting events might be aware of the above points, it is the job of PR firms to remind clients, especially ones that are considering sports tie-ins for the first time, that the big budgets necessary for implementing a mega event sports program has the possibility of receiving negative publicity with no assurances of receiving positive coverage.
My first job in public relations, after I left the newspaper business as papers failed, was with a political PR firm, where I worked on accounts ranging from local to statewide to presidential ones. Early on, a politician told me, “There’s no way you can prevent negative stories from being written. All I want you to do is to research the reporters before you contact them about me so that you don’t set me up with one that always writes negative stories.”
PR people on all types of accounts, not just sports marketing ones, should do the same.
