DPRK Olympic Teams Find Sponsors
Since China’s star Olympic athletes have signed endorsement contracts with western sports apparel firms, their Chinese competitors have looked to the “Land of the Morning Calm” to help them cash in on the ‘08 Olympics (and beyond)…
Press release here (PDF): News_Release_Sponsorship_17Jan07.pdf
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Female Weightlifters, Spanish Basketball Stars, and Kim Jong-il
Slate
Jacob Leibenluft
7/25/2007
Chinese companies can’t compete with the world powers when it comes to locking up megastars. Olympic gold-medalist hurdler Liu Xiang, who will likely emerge as the biggest Chinese star of the Beijing games, has a deal with Nike. One of China’s leading sports-marketing consultants told me that every starter on the national basketball team has a deal with a foreign brand. Yi Jianlian, whom the Milwaukee Bucks selected with the sixth pick of the NBA draft, had a Nike contract by the time he was 16.
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At the same time, Chinese shoe companies’ Billy Beane-like quest for hidden value has led to a few questionable decisions. Most sneaker companies would shy away from sponsoring the North Korean Olympic team. At the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, the DPRK won a grand total of five medals, none of them gold. Besides, the Hermit Kingdom doesn’t exactly conjure up the kind of brand associations most shoe companies are looking for. But Erke’s sponsorship of North Korea has a simple explanation. North Korea’s strongest sports include gymnastics, table tennis, and diving, all of which draw huge support and TV audiences in China.
July 29th, 2008 at 11:40 am
[…] Last year, North Korean Economy Watch informed readers about China Hongxing, the sports apparel comp…. Since most popular Chinese athletes are sponsored by relatively wealthier western sports apparel firms, Chinese companies had to come up with another strategy to make sure their products were noticed at the 2008 Olympics. Sponsoring lesser-known, niche teams that could win gold in a handful of events seems to be the way to go… […]
June 21st, 2009 at 9:50 pm
[…] sports apparel firms signed China’s top athletes in anticipation of Olympic exposure, an innovative Chinese sports apparel firm, with a significantly smaller advertising budget, got creativ… and attempted to boost its brand name by sponsoring North Korean Olympic teams that would likely […]