A regional daily editor has hit out at the London 2012 organisers over new restrictions which prevent papers getting local firms to sponsor their Olympic coverage.
Games organising committee LOCOG has sent out new legal guidance to newspapers on what can be done with the Olympic branding.
The guidelines include a tightening of restrictions so that no Olympics editorial supplement or column can be sponsored by a local company as it would breach the association rights of the Games’ official partners.
Northern Echo editor Peter Barron said the move was “going too far” because local papers needed commercial support to pay for the extra pages needed to promote the Olympics properly.
Writing in his blog, he said: “I fully appreciate the need for the Olympic organisers to protect the interests of their official global sponsors who pay millions to be directly associated with the greatest sporting event on earth.
“But surely it is going too far to prevent local newspapers from giving local companies the opportunity to sponsor Olympic coverage which is deemed to play such an important part in engaging communities the length and breadth of Britain.
“Local newspapers need commercial support to pay for the extra pages required to promote the Olympics properly.
“Granted, conventional advertising around the editorial is allowed (we think), but sponsorship is a particularly effective way of generating revenue – and that is being disallowed.
“It seems to me that Britain wants it all ways when it comes to the local press. The Prime Minister urges us to make our readers feel part of London 2012, but woe betide those of us who dare to get our coverage sponsored on a purely local level.
“Common sense might prevail in the end – but who’s going to take that chance with the world’s top lawyers hovering? It feels a bit like being asked to join a race with our legs tied together.”
A spokeswoman for LOCOG said: “Content about the Olympic Games, if sponsored, gives the sponsoring business an association with the Games.
“It is that sort of association that our commercial partners, which have invested millions in the Games to enable them to happen, have the exclusive right to assert.
“As such, newspapers can sell sponsorship opportunities to Olympic content to our partners.
“However, they cannot sell such sponsorship to other businesses as this would infringe the legal rights which have been implemented to ensure we are able to offer our partners exclusivity and thereby raise the funding necessary to stage the Games.”
Meanwhile another regional daily has criticised LOCOG’s ‘policing’ of the Olympic brand after a local charity was forced to rename a planned ‘Olympic’ event.
Instead of the Greentop Community Circus in Sheffield holding its Olympics Cabaret, it is now having to host its Sports Day Cabaret.
Sheffield Star editor Jeremy Clifford wrote in an editorial: “We understand the need to protect copyright, image rights and commercial rights associated with sponsors….but the ‘policing’ of these rights around the Olympic mark is bordering on the ludicrous.
“But if the true spirit of the Olympics is to be shared across the nation, then the LOCOG organisation behind protecting those rights needs to get a sense of perspective.”
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McDonald’s or whoever must be quaking in their boots because Bloggs’ Bakery wants to offer a free doughnut in the Olympic supplement of the East Nowhere Bugle
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I think LOCOG’s position is completely understandable. Why should Joe Bloggs the plumber be able to buy association with the Olympics for a few grand when big firms (rightly or wrongly) pay tens of millions for it?
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Nothing compares to the Olympic rings we’re having to jump through to cover the Torch Relay. Why can’t a photographer get on the motor convoy bus at one end of our patch and stay on until the Torch leaves instead of jumping off at every section – we can’t even book the same photographer on consecutive sections.
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Well said Peter. The Olympic torch passed right through our circulation area on Friday and Saturday. I have hundreds of local photographs of local people, many waving material handed out by the Games sponsors – and also pictures of the sponsors’ teams preceding the torch with their vehicles.
I am sure part of the reason these companies sponsor the games is to get localised press coverage. It might not be the main aim, but it all helps with their branding targets. Should I therefore, in a tit-for-tat gambit not use any of the pictures showing the Lloyds TSB, Coca-Cola, Samsung imagery etc etc?
LOCOG need to know this is a two way street.
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The ‘petty’ restrictions being enforced by the Games organisers are going beyond a joke now.
Last week we heard of a group of Brownies being warned by a dark suited man to remove their ‘Welcome’ banner – which displayed the olympic rings drawn in crayon – as the torch passed through their town.
Small businesses have been threatened with lawyers for using the words Olympic Games in their marketing.
If we are all supposed to get behind the Games then we have to be allowed to run our businesses & Brownie packs, without the fear of a lawsuit landing on the doormat.
Will I support the Games? Not if they won’t support my small business.
And the Govt. response? Deathly silence!!
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King Juan
I do understand your point … except that it’s all one-way traffic. So a school cannot display the Olympic rings because Coca-Cola has paid millions. But the Olympic committee expect the schools to buy in to the games concept, encourage the kids etc and get nothing in return.
On a personal level, I find it incredibly dull. All the boring sports, spectator-wise, in one place (is there a more over-rated sport than track and field running???) with athletes spouting cliches before and after. Not for me.
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The sooner this bombastic, grandiose school sports day for privately-educated posh kids is over the better.
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Thinks: supposing all papers sold combined sponsorships to several little local companies together. Would Macdonalds or Coca-Cola be so daft as to sue them all – especially if faced with the threat of a boycott of their products if they did?
As a matter of interest, why is this issue only arising at this late stage? I’d have thought that sensible advertising, marketing and planning departments would have been on to it long ago.
Might it just be the very short termism in those areas that is killing our local regional press?
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“As such, newspapers can sell sponsorship opportunities to Olympic content to our partners.”
What a lot of nonsense.
“Yes, is that BP/Proctor & Gamble/Visa? We wondered if you would be interested in sponsoring our Olympics coverage in the Anytown Gazette……..”
There’s a ridiculous amount of control given to the sponsors. Companies involved in official Olympic contracts have been told they cannot speak about it.Good stories about local companies creating jobs and making money effectively censored.
There were even warnings about coverage of the torch relay. Or is it the Coca Cola Olympic Torch relay?
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The Olympic organisers have been bleating on about the whole UK getting behind the Olympic Games. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for many people, me included, to enjoy the largest international event of its kind, in the world. But I’m not going to pay good money to buy offical Olympic merchandise, if small local companies are banned from entering into the spirit of the event, by sponsoring local coverage. That’s what people in their communities want to see, local companies backing what is arguably ‘the biggest show’ on earth.
Britain allegedly has the word ‘Great’ in front of it for a reason. It’s long established sense of fair play and equality. After all is that not why so many people flock to our shores to escape injustice in their own lands. Britain is quickly losing its ‘Great’ tag, something that will be hastened, in my opinion, if the sponsors are allowed to ruin the Olympic Games for the masses.
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As some who is currently chasing Coca Cola for info on the Torch Relay coming to my area shortly they are certainly running the show.
Every call to the council and LOCOG is met with the same response “Well that really is something for Coca Cola.”
The council even don’t know what is happening other than a very sketchy time line.
It’s not the pope coming to town it’s a bit of metal and fire being carried by a local octogenarian for pity’s sake
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The Olympics may well have started off with noble sporting ideals but it is all about money now.
The only reason David Beckham was so upset not to make the cut was because of the negative impact his absence from Team GB will have on his ‘brand’.
As Cherrywonder rightly says, the London 2012 Olympics is essentially nothing more than a glorified school sports day for David Cameron and Boris Johnson types. I just can’t wait for the whole thing to be over and done with.
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Guys, stop this whinging. Face facts – if you were as important as you seem to think you are the Olympic people would have bent over backwards to help you. Sadly, you’ve been drastically overtaken by other forms of the media which can provide all the info 99 per cent of us can ever want or need. I feel sorry for the regional press when it comes to the BBC being given money to invade your territory, but I don’t see why you think you are so important to this whole Olympic business. You’ve nothing to do with it.
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