The International Olympic Committee (IOC) signed a deal with Lacoste for co-branded apparel, marking the first step in an effort to position the Olympics as a year-round brand, the IOC’s Timo Lumme tells us.

Lacoste’s Heritage Collection, which will be available mid-summer, will focus on the 50th anniversary of the Olympic Winter Games in Grenoble, France and the Summer Games in Mexico City with apparel featuring the Olympic rings and the Lacoste crocodile. The Mexico City collection will have 14 pieces, while there will be 10 for Grenoble – each with short- and long-sleeved polo shirts, winter jacket, sweatshirt, t-shirt, caps and a winter hat.

The apparel will be sold through Lacoste’s stores  in Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain and the UK; a U.S. agreement has yet to be set. Future programs will, like the Lacoste agreement, focus on mid- to high-end products and there will be fewer licensees than are typically signed for the Games.

The three-year Lacoste pact is the first of several the IOC hopes to strike as it seeks to build the Olympics into an evergreen brand immune from the peaks and valleys that accompany sales of merchandise tied to the Games in a given market, says Lumme. Licensing typically accounts for about 5% of the IOC’s revenue in an Olympic year; it relies on broadcast rights and sponsorships for the bulk of its revenue.

“We haven’t set specific financial benchmarks and it is really about the number of people you can touch. That is really the yardstick we are using to measure this,” says Lumme. “This gives us, without the financial pressure, the luxury of building out the program with the broadest possible customer base with a level of affinity for the Olympic brand.  If we are successful there will be a financial payoff, but we aren’t looking at it as a third pillar of our revenue after broadcast and sponsorship.  [That] frees us of the short term pressure that might lead us into areas that we don’t need go into.”

The IOC also is developing an Olympic Collection of licensed products that will target younger consumers with toys and sports equipment. “We are trying to create that first connection with a particular sport and obviously the Olympic rings,” says Lumme.

The IOC also is working with sponsor Alibaba to create an ecommerce store, with a goal to have it in place “well in advance” of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo.

The IOC’s new approach is in contrast to previous strategies that were “more ad hoc and reactive,” says Lumme. “Once we had a roadmap for building out the overall organization, we were able to reprioritize some activities and licensing was pushed up the ladder.”

Yet the new strategy won’t change the IOC’s long-standing policy of having local Olympic organizers handle licensing in a given market. It will have a separate Olympic Games Program for local organizers. The amount of games-related revenue can vary. For example, the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing featured 68 licensees and generated $163 million in revenue, while those in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 had 59 licensees and $31 million in revenue.

“We want to build up a level of expertise and increase the support we can give them moving forward,” says Lumme.

Contact:

International Olympic Committee, Betty Aldini, Licensing Mgr. Commercial Integration, +41 21 621 61 11, betty.aldini@olympic.org