With the London Olympics just over a year away preparations are reaching a zenith, and not just in the building and preparations for the sports stadiums. The modern Olympics is a huge marketing opportunity for many companies with tens of thousands of visitors from across the globe expected to descend on London for the games next year.
Outdoor advertising spaces around the game’s location are to be auctioned off next week—the first time in the games history when advertising space has been auctioned—in an online-auction.
The auction will contain about 4,000 media packages which will be offered to existing Olympic partners first, however, it is expected that over £100 million worth of advertising space will go unsold and be re-auctioned to none Olympic partners.
The auctioned packages, which are designed to run from June 2011 to September 2012, are expected to have a reserve price of £675,000 for the 12 month exclusive period.
As reported in the Guardian this week, Chris Townsend, commercial director for the London Olympic Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, said: “We are making it a drip process over a number of weeks to keep it easy for the buyers. What we have here is a fair, open and transparent process.”
He added that the first two weeks of the auction is only available to the 18 worldwide, tier one Olympic sponsor followed by tier two and tier three sponsors after the third week, which will bring the total number of bidders to more than 40.
