Dr. John Grady
Professor of Sport and Entertainment Management at the University of South Carolina. He researches legal issues in Olympic sponsorship, including the intersection of ambush marketing, social media, and Rule 40.
Email: jgrady@sc.edu
Twitter: @JGradySportsLaw
Dr. Gashaw Abeza
Associate Professor at Towson University. His research interest is in marketing communications. He has written extensively on the topic, publishing over 80 peer-reviewed works including 7 books, 48 journal articles and 31 book chapters.
Email: gabeza@towson.edu
While the Paris 2024 Olympics promised to modernize the Games to appeal to a new generation of Olympic fans, it also continues to attract multinational corporations as official sponsors of the event who seek to benefit from the halo effect and exclusivity that the Olympics provides. Meanwhile, nonsponsoring companies, such as Apple AirPods and Celsius energy drink, are increasingly developing creative strategies to capitalize on the attention, goodwill, and other benefits associated with the Games. Ambush marketing, a sophisticated practice where nonsponsors seek an association or affiliation with the event or seek to confuse consumers about who the official sponsors are, has proliferated around mega sport events. Ambush marketing is a concern for event organizers as it devalues the sponsorship rights paid by long-standing sponsors and threatens the financial viability of these events (Grady, 2024). A study by Abeza et al. (2020) used data from three Games prior to Paris and reported that ambush marketing on social media has evolved from direct distraction, confusion, and rule-breaking to more opportunistic, subtle, and sophisticated marketing communication practices. The ability of brands to capitalize on viral moments during the Olympics creates new opportunities for ambush marketing by nonsponsors to associate with the event’s popularity and goodwill. Thus, social media has only fanned the flames for increased ambush marketing activities at each Olympic Games.
Social media, with its unique features—easy access, public forum, viral potential, and lack of time or border restrictions—has opened novel opportunities and expanded the sphere for ambushers to execute their creative marketing initiatives. This led the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to release subsequent social media guidelines with the most expanded version in June 2024 for the Olympic Games in Paris. These guidelines followed revisions to Rule 40 of the Olympic Charter at the behest of athletes demanding the ability to engage more with their personal sponsors if those brands are also not official sponsors of the event. Rule 40 is designed to protect the exclusivity of IOC sponsors by prohibiting nonsponsors from benefiting from the goodwill of the Olympics and to protect the reputation and monetary value of being an “official sponsor” of the Games. Rule 40 guidance for Paris 2024 states, “All participants are permitted to promote their sponsors, and all sponsors are permitted to use Participant Images, during the Game Period, in accordance with the principles in this document” (IOC, 2024). This is a more relaxed version of the athletes’ guidelines compared to guidance used for the past four Games and is a direct attempt to provide athletes with new sponsorship opportunities. However, an added element of intrigue for Paris 2024 is a pilot program created by the IOC to allow athletes to engage with certain sporting goods brands who endorse them, including Nike, Adidas and Under Armour on social media in a limited way during the Games (Marks & Clerk, 2024). This is significant as the “Games period” is typically the Rule 40 Olympic “blackout” period reserved exclusively for the sponsors and where athletes with nonsponsor endorsements are expected to be muted on social media.
Within the context of the latest guidelines, social media offers a new level of ease for nonsponsors to reach their target markets. Even with host countries’ legislation and the IOC’s social media guidelines in place, the distinctive features of social media are expanding the scope for ambushers to execute creative marketing initiatives. This repositions the challenge of counteracting ambush marketing from being primarily a legal concern to include the added focus of effective social media monitoring and management.
The rise of visual platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, coupled with creative imagery used by nonsponsors, further complicates efforts to control ambush marketing through traditional legal measures. These platforms transcend geographic boundaries and bypass institutional gatekeepers, making it difficult to enforce advertising restrictions. This challenge is apparent for sports that may not receive extensive traditional media coverage but have passionate fans following their athletes on social media. For instance, athletes competing in the Olympic trials, like decathlete Jack Flood, have credited social media—especially TikTok—for attracting sponsors, securing endorsement deals with Raising Cane’s and Panda Express (Dent, 2024).
As a result, regulating athletes’ social media activities through measures like Rule 40 and the IOC’s social media policies becomes increasingly complex and delicate, making the threat of ambush marketing more difficult to manage. In this marketing landscape, most Olympic athletes can be seen as both celebrities and social media influencers. Celebrity athletes now extend their offline star power to online platforms (Abeza et al., 2017). Similarly, social media influencers act as pivotal connection points between their peers and ‘what matters’ in their communities (Nisbet & Kotcher, 2009). Social media influencers are characterized by three key factors: what they know (level of expertise), whom they know (network size), and who they are (traits and values).
Early lessons and insights from the Paris 2024 Games confirm that social media and digital engagement are key to reach a younger audience of Olympic fans. This will require new innovative approaches to tackle the challenges presented by social media ambush and developing new brand protection strategies rooted in digital innovation rather than legal recourse. Meanwhile, the reaction of the Games’ top partners (TOP) to further relaxation of Rule 40 at the Paris Olympics remains to be seen.
