The selection of companies to sponsor the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games will be over by the end of the year and, according to Yuan Bin, director of the Marketing Department of Beijing 2008, income from the Olympic marketing plan has surpassed expectations.
She said, “the rapid development of the Chinese economy laid a solid foundation for the marketing program of the 2008 Olympic Games. The income of the Beijing 2008 marketing plan has already surpassed our budget and this is the result of the rapid development of the Chinese economy”, reports the China Daily.
Beijing 2008 has 12 worldwide Olympic partners and has signed sponsorship contracts with 11 partners, 10 sponsors, 15 executive suppliers and 14 regular suppliers. It has also chosen 13 sports equipment suppliers covering 18 Olympic sports.
The next stage of the marketing department plan will focus on providing better services and how to better protect the rights of sponsors. Yuan added, “we will also help sponsoring companies to hold Olympic marketing activities through the Olympic platform”.
As for the Beijing 2008 licensing program, Yuan said more licensed stores would open.
“By the end of May 2007, BOCOG has selected 59 licensed manufacturers and more than 800 licensed stores have opened across China. There are over 4,000 kinds of licensed products and by the time of the Games in 2008 about 10,000 licensed stores and sales areas will have opened”.
Meanwhile the International Olympic Committee (IOC) proposed talks Thursday with unions and the heads of a campaign group that revealed Chinese factories producing goods for the Beijing Olympics were using child labour.
The PlayFair 2008 campaign called the IOC offer a “small positive step”, reports AFP.
In a letter the IOC said that it was “looking to host a discussion with different stakeholders on this topic” of factories that make goods under an Olympic licence.
“The IOC does not directly manage and control the production of all-Olympic related products across the world. This does not mean that we do not care about how they are produced”, said the letter.
“How to ensure an ethical supply chain is something that has been under study for some time at the IOC”.
