PyeongChang Ready to Sell 2018 Olympics

(ATR) The joint marketing deal is supposed to provide $1.1 billion to help stage the first Winter Olympics in Korea. That’s about half the budget, with the rest coming from the IOC.

IOC President Jacques Rogge came to Seoul to sign the agreement, staged at the end of a lunch for about 50 government, business and sport leaders and as many media covering the event.

It’s the first major undertaking between POCOG and the IOC since the 2018 Games were awarded to the mountain village 18 months ago.

"Today’s signing of the marketing plan agreement marks the moment the local organizers truly take ownership of their promotional and financial destiny," said the IOC president.

Signing on behalf of Pyeongchang was Jin Sun Kim, chairman and president of POCOG.

"Now let me take this opportunity to encourage the country’s leading companies as well as promising small and medium-sized businesses to take part in the historic 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Games through its Olympic sponsorship program", said Kim in his remarks, declaring that POCOG is ready for "action"

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ATR understands that PyeongChang has its focus set on securing its first sponsor, a bank, in the next six months. If recent Olympic bank sponsorships are a rule of thumb, the category could yield $200 million.

After banking, the categories for telecommunications and automobiles will go up for grabs. With two muscle-bound Korean firms in the latter category, Kia and Hyundai, bidding for the rights between those two brands could be interesting.

Marketing for POCOG is being directed by Hoomyung Lee, who was involved with the bid for the Games.

Happy with the deal is Korean Olympic Committee President Y.S. Park. In exchange for surrendering its marketing rights to POCOG under the agreement, Park says the KOC will reap about$7 million a year through 2020.

In comments to reporters after the signing, Kim said the global financial slowdown appears to be easing, which he says will help strike sponsorship deals.

"Our analysis shows that those conditions will get better," said Kim, who spent 45 minutes with the journalists, all of them familiar to him for their coverage of the three bids it took for Pyeongchang to land the Games.

Governor of Gangwon Province for the first two bids, Kim is well-connected with incoming president of the republic Geun Hye Park. He is in charge of preparations for her Feb. 25 inauguration, a task hereferred to with a laugh as "a second job". He said Park will be a great supporter of the Olympics, for which the government is footing 75 percent of venue construction costs.

The signing in Seoul will be the last of this sort for Rogge, who steps down from office in September. But this journey to Korea will bring a first: a trip to Pyeongchang which he’s yet to see. He’ll go there Thursday, accompanied by Gunilla Lindberg, chair of the IOC Evaluation Commission, and top staff members Gilbert Felli, Olympic Games Executive Director and director general Christophe DeKepper.

Besides checking out the Winter Games locale, Rogge will also get the chance to take in some of the sport at the Special Olympics World Winter Games. The Special Olympics opened Wednesday and run through Feb. 5 with 3100 athletes from 110 countries.This year marks the 25th anniversary of the agreement between the IOCand Special Olympics International granting the permission to use the"O" word.

Rogge is supposed to dine Wednesday night with IOC colleague Kun Hee Lee, chairman of Samsung Electronics, a worldwide sponsor of the Olympics.

Written and reported in Korea by Ed Hula

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