Tracking Olympic Sponsors in Newsdesk: No such thing as bad publicity?

We are continuing our coverage of the Olympics using Newsdesk to understand how the top Olympic sponsors at the London Games are benefiting from their advertising dollars and pounds.

Visa is hoping that there is no such thing as bad publicity after a system malfunction left spectators unable to pay with their Visa cards at Wembley Stadium. Unfortunately, as a condition of their sponsorship, Visa is the only accepted credit card at the 2012 Olympics, leading to long lines for concessions and disgruntled visitors.

This mishap was the main feature on dozens of sites and gained a passing mention in many more.

On the positive side of things, Visa did get good coverage with their real-time congratulatory commercial for Emilie Heyman:

[Visa] introduced a new congratulatory commercial celebrating Emilie Heyman’s bronze medal performance in women’s synchronized 3-metre springboard at the London 2012 Olympic Games. The spot, entitled “Congratulations Emilie,” aired on Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium and features an image of Emilie on the podium in London.

Visa had more coverage than Coke and GE combined.

Our medalists for most news coverage on the 30th of July are:

• Gold: Visa
• Silver: Coke
  
• Bronze: GE

After taking Bronze over the weekend, Samsung did not place in the top 3 today and GE won their first medal.

What is your opinion about Visa’s sponsorship? Even with the troubles at Wembley, was it still a good move to have a monopoly on payments at the games? Tell us in the comments!

2 Comments July 31, 2012