You’ll probably notice something about sports wearing headsets during contest if you watch a few minutes of skateboarding at the Olympics.
Yuto Horigome, a bronze medal from Team USA, and bronze medalist Nyjah Huston of Japan both wore Apple AirPods when they won gold in the men’s road competition next week. Gold medal Taylor Eaton, even of Team USA, wore Samsung flowers, Canada’s Cordano Russell wore JLab.
Of those organizations, simply Samsung is an established IOC partner. The others have no affiliation—they do n’t even appear to have deals with the athletes themselves—but they are getting value. Intelligent visitors can interpret some of the differences in the athletes ‘ microphone choices from news websites and social media accounts. According to Apex Marketing Group, more than$ 200, 000 in media coverage was generated by the men’s city award competition between Huston and Horigome on Saturday, July 27, and more is expected to be from the men’s park playoffs on Wednesday.
The scooter headphones are an anachronism of Olympics traditions, but also of sports advertising. Several organizations invest more effort in protecting their sponsorships and business rights than the IOC. The group makes about$ 2 billion per cycle from its sponsors, and if you’re not paying the IOC or a national team, the Olympics does n’t want you anywhere near the competition.
There are exceptions, of course, every game has its own “designated specific products” list. Because sneakers are regarded as having a performance-based material, runners may use their favorite brand of footwear. Riders you ride the bike of their finding, golfers use their own balloons. Skateboarding’s record includes shoes, board and a host of protective gear, but does not discuss headphones.
So what’s going on in Paris? A Team USA spokesperson told Sportico that skaters are permitted to play music in their ear during opposition. Headphone use is permitted unless it is deemed a health hazard, according to World Skate’s rules for both road and park competitions, which are set by each global federation.
That does n’t answer the question about the IOC’s commercial rights, however. Most of the Olympic marketing experts were unsurprised that non-performance products may appear so vividly during competition, according to Sportico. Towson University associate professor of sports management Gashaw Abeza was one of the authors of a report on the marketing activities for the 2020 Olympics.
In an email, he wrote that” the practice of non-sponsors associating themselves with an event without an official or direct commercial connection is an ambush marketing practice.” This practice poses a threat to both property owners, such as the International Olympic Committee ( IOC), and official sponsors. If the process continues, it has a substantial chance to destroy the IOC’s ability to command higher funding costs in the future, which could result in long-term declines in its earnings.
There’s story with headphones and invasion selling at the Olympics. At the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, Beats by Dre distributed merchandise to people of the USA Basketball group, and it became an over experience. Four years later, at the Summer Games in London, the organization did something similar. The name Beats over-ear earphones were everywhere on the outside, much to the consternation of IOC partner Panasonic.
It surprises me to see it happening again, according to Ricardo Fort, a marketing specialist who oversaw the Olympics ‘ interactions at both Visa and Coca-Cola. I may have preferred that the IOC had been more flexible with that as a partner.
Skateboarders and any manufacturers of headphones that do n’t directly collaborate with the Games—i. e. no Samsung—must also agree to the IOC’s Rule 40, the Team USA spokesperson said. Rule 40 regulates the restricted presence that brands are permitted to have if they are not standard sponsors, which is probably the most contentious aspect of the sponsorship rules for the Games. The regulations are complex, but in essence, those companies have strict restrictions on how to market their interactions with Olympians and how to thank their partners. Olympics marks, medals or language ca n’t be used in any scenario.
Those laws have been loosened in recent years, which could be a component in IOC’s processing of earphones in skating, according to Jonathan Jensen, a sports marketing expert and Texas A&, M associate professor. Around the same time as the change to Rule 40 regulations, the sport was added to the Tokyo Games ‘ programme in 2021.
The general public is increasingly aware that Olympians only have a small window to utilize their long-standing partners, Jensen said in an email. Yet when donors like Apple may conflict with international Olympic partners like Samsung,” I think the Olympics realize it’s not a good look to be extremely limiting.”
To put one more layer of misunderstandings to the skateboarders ‘ headphones, it’s not entirely evident that many of their options are driven by sponsorships. Although neither Huston nor Horigome have promoted any professional connection with Apple, Eton has a Samsung offer. ( A rep for Horigome confirmed there was no commercial deal, a rep for Huston did n’t return a request ).
Huston, however, has n’t been shy about his love of Apple products. The skater called his AirPods a “mandatory item” in a GQ movie about his essential travel items, 10 Items Nyjah Huston Can’t Live Without.
” I generally use them when I’m skating— I listen to a lot of hip-hop, even a lot of home music”, he said. I believe that my lack of AirPods demonstrates that I am a fairly organized man with my belongings.