Confident Deighton revises London 2012 sponsorship target

By James Toney, Sportsbeat

LONDON 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton believes the power of the Olympics is beating the recession.

CONFIDENT: Locog chief executive Paul Deighton believes £700m can now be raised in sponsorship revenue (Getty Images)

With its headquarters in the hit-hard financial and banking heart of Canary Wharf, Locog insist they are bucking the trend.

Just 24 hours after Visa was announced as the presenting partner of ‘Team 2012', in a deal worth an estimated £10 million, UPS were unveiled as the official logistics partner for the Games.

It takes the money raised from sponsorship to over £550 million - more than any other Olympic local organising committee - and Deighton believes more is to come.

"I've always, said from the very beginning, that I thought the range of sponsorship we'd raise would be between £650 and £700m," said Deighton.

"The success of the programme so far has encouraged us to shift to the right-hand end of that expectation.

"From the perspective of the overall economic environment I think people are planning for recovery, rather than managing through the worst of it.

"The momentum of our sponsorship programme and the excitement of the Olympics is a strong pull, despite the economic background.

"There is high probability that we are done on tier one sponsorships and we'll fill out tier twos in the next few months but most of the deals from now on will be tier three partnerships."

London's decision to sign up nearly £500m of sponsorship before the banking crisis one year ago seems either prudent or fortuitous.

And earlier this year their prior financial planning was praised by IOC member Denis Oswald during an evaluation commission visit.

UPS become the London 2012's fifth tier two partner after they signed up as lead logistics partner in a goods in kind deal worth between £15m and £20m.

The US-based company performed the same role in Beijing last year - managing the shipping and delivery of more than 19 million items, ranging from athlete luggage to broadcast equipment.

"Getting the logistics right is absolutely critical," added Deighton.

"The Olympic Games is the biggest logisti cal operation there is. We are start-up organisation and needed to call the best guys.

"Some of these deals are about financial contributions but the significant advantage to us is the operational experience that UPS will bring.

"We absolutely need this service provided to us, so this deal is as good as cash, it's budget relieving."