Watered Down Beer Sponsors for Olympics

(ATR) In an unusual move, rival companies have been named this week as the official domestic beer sponsors of the Beijing Olympics. Defying marketing wisdom that calls for sponsorship exclusivity, Yanjing and Tsingtao will share the China beer category.

BOCOG marketing chief Yuan Bin calls it "special situation" for the press in Beijing.

Indeed it is. With Budweiser signed-on already as the international beer sponsor for 2008 (as well as for the Chinese National Olympic Committee), BOCOG perhaps found face-saving value in splitting the domestic beer category between Yanjing, China's top brand and Tsingtao, now partly owned by Budweiser parent Anheuser Busch.

"We're happy that Tsingtao, in which Anheuser-Busch holds a 27 percent economic interest, joins us in supporting the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games," says A-B Olympics marketing chief Tony Ponturo in a statement to Around the Rings.

"We have always understood that the Beijing Organizing Committee would sell the "domestic beer" category sponsorship of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games," says Ponturo, expressing no complaints about having to split the beer category into three parts.

Yanjing is considered the number-one local brand in Beijing, so its selection by BOCOG as beer sponsor may be good business.

Tsingtao may China's best-known export, but it is a dribble in the domestic market compared with Yanjing, so Olympic sponsorship could help the brand in China.

It's not known yet if the same amount is being paid by each company to become a sponsors and whether there are limits or restrictions on the marketing campaigns of the two domestic sponsors.

More on the story coming in August 12 issue of Around the Rings.Com, your weekly review of news about the business of the Olympics.