Betting on athletes, which brands win?

In this dual competition of sports and business, how can brands identify the best and bet on success to become the winner in the marketing battlefield? This article will take you to explore and analyze the brand strategies that bet on athletes in the Olympic arena and ultimately won a win-win situation in terms of market and reputation.

The 2024 Paris Olympics came to an end amid people's reluctance.

"He ignored me completely, how can I say that?" "Little Paris, what a winner!" "Winning a gold medal just by working"... The post-00 athletes who took to the field in the Paris Olympics not only achieved good results, but also created many interesting jokes.

The Chinese team won 40 gold medals, 27 silver medals and 24 bronze medals. A total of 91 medals represent the efforts of the Olympic athletes in this Olympic Games, and also mean that another group of athletes have become the brand's favorite spokesperson candidates.

Paris Olympics Medal Table

In the sports marketing arena, it is not uncommon to bet on athletes. Once the bet is successful, the marketing effect can be twice the result with half the effort. Which brands in the Paris Olympics have relied on their superb betting ability and relied on athletes to quickly gain popularity?

1. Experts gather and brands take the lead

When it comes to cooperating with athletes in Olympic marketing, the timing of a brand’s action is very important. Signing athletes before the start of the Olympics is, to some extent, a gamble, and the outcome of the gamble is closely related to the athlete’s performance.

Therefore, when brands bet on athletes in the Chinese market, they will first consider their advantageous events. Judging from past performances, events such as table tennis, swimming, diving and shooting have always maintained a leading position in many Olympic Games.

There are even more athletes with commercial potential in this Olympics. It is understood that the Chinese sports delegation for the 2024 Olympics has a total of 716 people, including 405 athletes (136 male athletes and 269 female athletes). There are many excellent athletes, but only a few sports stars. At this time, brands need to be forward-looking and place bets in advance before the start of the games in order to expand their brand voice.

According to TOP, before the Olympics, brands such as Mengniu, Yili, Coca-Cola, and Omega took the lead in betting on athletes, and China's advantageous sports such as table tennis, swimming, and diving are still the mainstream choices of brands. Among them, swimmers Pan Zhanle and Zhang Yufei, table tennis player Sun Yingsha, and tennis player Zheng Qinwen have become the hot cakes in the eyes of brands before the opening of the competition.

Pre-Olympic Athlete Cooperation Brand

After the Olympics began, the performance of the athletes on the field touched the hearts of every spectator and also affected the results of the brand's bet. In this Paris Olympics, the Chinese national team won gold medals in the following events:

China's medal table at the Paris Olympics

Pan Zhanle broke the world record in the men's 100m freestyle final and won the gold medal. Zheng Qinwen, who participated in the Olympics for the first time, won the first Olympic women's singles gold medal in Chinese history. Fan Zhendong won the men's singles table tennis championship and achieved a Grand Slam...

Behind these athletes' wins, the brands that bet successfully also started celebrating enthusiastically. For example, Nike, which invested in Zheng Qinwen as early as 2013, put the slogan "The only souvenir you want to take away from Paris is the medal" on its billboards before the game, and after the game, it displayed Queen Wen's strength and dominance with the slogan "Victory will answer everything."

Nike & Zheng Qinwen Advertising Board

It is worth noting that some brands also officially announced their cooperation with athletes after the start of the competition. In the middle of the competition, the water bottle brand GREM officially announced its cooperation with Pan Zhanle during the Olympics, and Always and Danbis officially announced Zhang Yufei, striking while the iron is hot. After the Olympics, Skyworth Group officially announced its brand ambassador Wu Yanni, and RIMOWA officially announced its brand friend Fan Zhendong, catching up with the Olympic fever.

Of course, there are also cases where a high-profile player fails in the competition. Winning or losing in competition is common, and brands’ pre-match bets are often very risky. For example, Sun Yingsha, who won the runner-up in the women’s singles table tennis event, was a player that brands were keen to bet on and had high hopes placed on. Yili’s mistakes in the marketing process led to the “champagne at halftime” situation, which was widely criticized by fans. Fortunately, the subsequent apology was very sincere and appropriately restored the brand image.

"Champagne popping" mistake

2. Betting is a technical activity

Whether betting in advance or officially announcing during the competition, both are efficient ways for brands to seize consumers' minds during the Olympics. But among the 405 athletes, how do brands "select" the athletes who best suit them?

1. Cast a wide net

The first is the wide-ranging spokesperson cooperation, and the dairy brand Yili has a lot to say about this - one of its most important initiatives in sports marketing is to build momentum through athlete endorsements of its multiple product lines.

Since there is no official Olympic status in this Olympics, supporting athletes is also a good way to obtain "official status". In the Paris Olympics, Yili did not limit itself to a single sport, but chose to appear as the official dairy product of the Chinese sports delegation and cooperate with athletes in a wide-ranging manner.

From the cover of the brand's collaboration with Bazaar magazine before the Olympics, we can see that Yili has cooperated with athletes in many sports such as table tennis, tennis, swimming and diving.

Yili×Bazaar

In addition to Yili, brands such as Bawang Cha Ji, Coca-Cola, and Li Ning also officially announced athletes for multiple events before the games, and followed up on the athletes' award progress in real time during the games. They constantly emphasized the cooperative relationship between athletes and brands through outdoor advertising and social media announcements, winning high exposure in the Paris Olympics.

2. Focus on potential stocks

Compared with the wide-ranging bets on athletes, brands that focus on potential stocks use a "high-risk" approach to communicate deeply with fan groups.

The athlete with the highest commercial value in the Paris Olympics is undoubtedly the tennis women's singles champion Zheng Qinwen. As the 15th young athlete in the Forbes 2023 Women's Athlete Income List, Qween Wen not only had brand partnerships with Nike, Wilson, Ant Group, Yili, Gatorade, Rolex, McDonald's, Lancome, and Bawang Chaji before the game, but she also won more olive branches from brands after winning the championship for creating a miracle in Chinese tennis.

Zheng Qinwen won the championship brand congratulations picture

These brands spotted Zheng Qinwen's potential early on and placed their bets on her. After the athlete won the championship, they promoted her in a high-profile manner, attracting the attention of consumers who flocked to look for the same products. The brands thus became the biggest winners in the entire event.

3. Focus on new and cutting-edge styles

It is worth noting that the potential stocks in this year's Olympics are not limited to regular events. This Olympics has added four new trendy events: breakdancing, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing, which have also attracted much attention to emerging athletes.

Among them, Chinese breakdance champion Liu Qingyi has attracted cooperation from brands such as Yili, Coca-Cola, Bawang Tea Princess, Adidas, Keep, Nongfu Spring, and Lancome. Focusing on emerging athletes means that brands have found a fulcrum to attract the attention of young consumers in large-scale events.

Breakdance Youngster Liu Qingyi

Cast a wide net, tap into potential stocks or bet on newcomers. The selection of athletes is not only based on their relevance to the brand, but more importantly, the brand's sports marketing strategy layout, cooperating with sports stars that consumers are more interested in to achieve traffic conversion.

3. Leave your mark in Paris in many ways

Choosing the right athletes is crucial. It is also worth considering how to maximize the commercial value of these sports stars and enable the brand to leave a "Paris mark".

Xiaohongshu netizens summarized a group of brand advertisements that left a deep impression during their stay in Paris:

Netizens summarize Olympic advertisements

From the brainwashing elevator ads to Liu Xiang and Mbappe's "little red~zhu~", the brand not only chose to cooperate with athletes who played in the Paris Olympics, but also took advantage of people's nostalgia to invite outstanding athletes from previous years, successfully leveraging the momentum of the Paris Olympics to break the brand's circle.

So apart from Nike’s passionate billboards and the early bets of major brands, what other ways are there for brands to leave their mark in Paris?

1. Find the champion ad space

Many brands have focused on strong athletes many years ago, hoping to use the champions as a natural advertising space to enhance the brand. The cooperation between OMEGA and Ma Long is a good example. When encountering such a dedicated spokesperson, the brand should be secretly happy~

Ma Long won the championship and showed off his OMEGA watch

2. Don’t judge heroes by their medals

Of course, sports competitions have always upheld the concept of sportsmanship first, and people will also adopt the attitude of "not judging success or failure by gold medals" in the world's largest sports events. Brands choose athletes as spokespersons, brand ambassadors and other partners not just for the sake of Olympic marketing, but also for the spiritual power behind the identity of athletes.

During the Olympics, Mengniu teamed up with six well-known athletes who had won championships, including Du Li, Wang Jin, Wang Hao, Wang Junxia, ​​Zou Shiming and Marbury, to create a series of interview documentaries titled "Being Strong is More Than Just Gold Medals."

Mengniu: "Strengthening is not just about gold medals"

The series focuses on the mental journey of several veteran athletes, emphasizes the inheritance of the spirit of "strengthening", and conveys the passion and emotion brought by the spirit of sports to the public. In this context, the brand gains emotional resonance from ordinary audiences through the stories of champions and establishes a spiritual connection.

3. Create new memes with nostalgic style

In addition, there are also younger ways to pay tribute to veteran athletes.

Xiaohongshu invited Liu Xiang and Mbappe to shoot a set of short films, which entered the minds of users in a brainwashing way of "Xiaohong~zhu~".

Xiaohongshu×Liu Xiang & Mbappe

This year, many brands including Xiaohongshu and Bawang Chaji have cooperated with Liu Xiang. Zheng Qinwen also paid tribute to Liu Xiang in an interview after winning the award. Although the veteran athlete has retired, his commercial value remains.

IV. Conclusion

The spirit of sports never stops. In each Olympic Games, there are always athletes full of dreams and ambitions who constantly challenge the limits of human beings. As sports stars, they can build a bridge for brands to communicate with users, which has great publicity value for brands.

Betting on athletes tests a brand's communication strategy and accurate insight into sports marketing. At the Paris Olympics, we witnessed the dual success of brands and athletes. Although the Paris Olympics has ended, TOP hopes that more Chinese brands will shine in Los Angeles and pay tribute to the athletes who continue to strive.