What the IOC is considering that could impact Utah’s Olympics

Could a new look at the International Olympic Committee’s sponsorship program mean more money for Utah’s 2034 Winter Games? And could a decision on a system rotating future Olympics among several permanent hosts be coming sooner rather than later?

The IOC’s new president, Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe, recently named members of the Switzerland-based organization to working groups charged with reviewing key elements of the Olympics, including sponsorships and a possible Games rotation.

Another working group, focused on “protecting the female category,” is getting a lot of attention despite being so secretive that the membership on the group dealing with transgender athlete participation has not been made public “to protect the integrity of the group and their work.”

But it’s the issues surrounding sponsorships, a key source of revenue for Olympic organizers, and the possibility of becoming a permanent Winter Games site that could have significant impacts on Utah.

Fraser Bullock, president and executive chair of the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, expects to see “very significant recommendations that will be helpful to the movement, including to OCOGs,” Olympic organizing committees like Utah’s.

Gene Sykes, one of four IOC members from the United States, is serving on the “Commercial Partnerships and Marketing” working group that’s examining the IOC’s sponsorship program, known as The Olympic Program or TOP, that helps fund Summer and Winter Games.

Sykes is also the chair of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and sits on the powerful executive committee of Utah’s organizing committee for the 2034 Winter Games.

He told the Deseret News that the focus of the working group isn’t on the revenues shared with Games organizers but what the international sponsorship program for the Olympics looks like going forward.

“Utah gets a share of the TOP sponsorship but it’s really, how do we deal with TOP sponsorships? What should be the strategy for engaging them, how do you help them activate, for keeping and getting new ones,” Sykes said.

“A lot of things have evolved since they started the program. The program was a pioneer when they started it,” he said. “Now, everything has changed, so you have to update it and make sure it is as fresh as possible.”

How Olympic sponsorships may be changing

The IOC saw three of its 15 TOP sponsors leave the decades-old program last year, Toyota, Panasonic and Bridgestone. All were based in Japan, where the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo were delayed a year and even then were off-limits to spectators due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sponsorships are a major source of revenue for the IOC, adding up to more than $2 billion in the last four-year Olympic cycle, according to The Associated Press. And Utah’s Olympic organizers are counting on significant sponsor dollars, too.

To cover the $4 billion price tag for the 2034 Games without using state or local tax dollars, organizers say it’ll take $231 million from the IOC’s international sponsorship revenues plus another $1.8 billion from the sale of domestic sponsorships in partnership with the USOPC.

Just what product or service categories are available for sponsorships is on the table.

“Sometimes the categories were set up on the definitions that were in place 30 years ago,” Sykes said. “We didn’t have mobile phones 30 years ago, so they’ve had to create categories for things that were narrowly defined when everything is dynamic.”

Now, mobile phones have many functions, as “watches and cameras and recording devices and platforms for AI analysis. Who could have imagined all this,” he said, adding, “you want to have your mind open as much as possible.”

A shuffle could open up new sponsor categories to be sold as domestic sponsorships by organizing committees, although it’s too soon to say what that might mean for Utah’s next Olympics.

The IOC did allow the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles to fill the auto category previously held by Toyota. In June, Honda became a “Founding Partner and the Official Automotive Partner” of Team USA and the LA. Games in a deal believed to be worth at least $200 million.

New sponsor opportunities could go beyond what’s left once the international-level categories are reset, Sykes said, to “how much flexibility do you give a domestic program to define things that might be companions to the TOP program.”

More revenue for Utah’s Games as a result of the working group’s recommendations is “certainly a possibility,” Bullock said, adding, “we always want to do better than we thought in every category. But I’m wide open to innovation, creativity, having the best minds get together.”

He called the effort “very healthy for the movement because the world is evolving so quickly, in the world of sport, in the areas of technology, in the areas of revenue and sponsorship, to just keep up, let alone get ahead of things, it takes a very deep and dynamic look.”

Because there’s another Olympics currently in the U.S. market, the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, Utah’s Winter Games organizers have to wait until 2029 to start selling domestic sponsorships.

By then, Bullock said, any changes made as a result of the working group should be in place. And he said the existing international sponsorship slots, largely filled beyond the L.A. Games, are “wide open” for 2034.

Last year, the IOC’s marketing director, Anne-Sophie Voumard, described TOP as “very, very dynamic” and made it clear that Olympic sponsors are being sought in new markets, such as India.

Many TOP sponsors are American companies, including Coca-Cola, Airbnb and VISA, although China’s Alibaba, a technology company that specializes in e-commerce, was signed by the IOC in 2017.

Will there be a rotation of Olympic hosts?

Team USA track and field champion Allyson Felix, a member of the IOC’s Athletes Commission, is on the working group looking at the Olympic program. Both Sykes and Felix were elected to the IOC last year.

Among the issues the Olympic program working group will consider is whether future Games should be rotated among a set group of hosts, something Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and other leaders have said they’d like to see for the state.

“Nothing’s off the table. They have a pretty big scope,” Coventry, the IOC president, told reporters recently about the Olympic program working group when asked if rotating Games sites was on the agenda.

“I’ve asked them to look at everything,” Coventry said, including “the complexity of the Games; sport, but also the disciplines in each sport; look at the potential rotation between summer and winter. Really, I think that it is time for us to explore anything and everything.”

That’s the only way to determine whether a proposed change, such as naming what would be permanent Olympic hosts, “is a little bit too out there and we can’t get there yet or, oh, that’s actually really a good idea,” the IOC president said.

Rotating the Games isn’t a new idea. But it took hold back in December 2022, when IOC leaders suddenly delayed advancing bids from Utah and others, citing a need to look at the impact of climate change before deciding the 2030 and 2034 Winter Games hosts.

The IOC eventually determined it was time to go ahead with the bid awards, giving 2030 to the French Alps and 2034 to Utah during last year’s Summer Games in Paris, and moving Switzerland to a new preferred bidding status for 2038.

With as many three Winter Games lined up, further talk about establishing a rotational system of hosts was expected to be put on hold for possibly a decade or more.

Bullock said it’s “potentially” good that decision may be made much sooner, since it could provide “long-term stability for Winter Games where there are climate change challenges and other issues.”

No matter what happens, though, Olympic leaders aren’t shy about looking beyond 2034.

During last week’s meeting of the advisory steering committee for Utah’s Games, the CEO of the USOPC, Sarah Hirshland, declared she hopes that when the state’s next Olympics are over, Utahns “are ready to get back in line for the next one.”

As the community, political, business and sports leaders who serve on the committee clapped, a smiling Bullock added, “when do they start bids for 2050?”