Ask the Experts: Is Olympic marketing really a gold medal investment?

Every two years, the world turns its attention to a global stage. Records fall. Controversies unfold. National pride rises in real time.

And beyond the podium, another competition quietly plays out: one measured not in medals, but in attention, relevance, and long-term brand meaning.

This is the business of Olympic marketing.

For brands, the Games are one of the world’s most visible, and most demanding, marketing stages. Sponsorships can run into the hundreds of millions, with commitments made years before the Opening Ceremony, and returns that develop long after the flame is extinguished. The investment is high-stakes, difficult to measure, and strategically complex.

And yet, many of the world’s most sophisticated organizations continue to invest.

So, what are they really buying? And how should business leaders think about Olympic marketing in a fragmented media landscape where attention is fleeting and ROI is scrutinized?

In this edition of Ask the Experts, Matthew Diamond, Ivey Marketing Lecturer and lead of the School’s new Ivey Online course, The Business of Sports Marketing, examines the strategic logic behind Olympic investment, and what leaders should understand before stepping into sport’s biggest arena.

Ivey Impact: If the Olympics are one of the most expensive marketing bets a brand can make, why do serious brands still invest?

Matthew Diamond (MD): It’s that time of year when Canadians have the perfect excuse to escape the cold and gather around their screens for the Olympics. In fact, at my BIG Digital office this week, we have our displays playing Olympic content non-stop, creating moments of lunchtime viewing, impromptu discussion, and shared national pride.

But as we examine the business of sports marketing, and in this case, the business of Olympic sponsorship, it looks increasingly out of step with today’s prevailing marketing strategy. It is capital-intensive, difficult to measure, exposed to uncontrollable risks, and locked in years before market conditions are known. And yet, some of Canada’s most sophisticated brands continue to treat the Olympics as a cornerstone investment.

The reason is simple and often misunderstood. The Olympics do not primarily deliver efficiency; they deliver legitimacy.

For brands operating in trust-dependent categories like financial services, telecom, energy, and retail, the Olympics function less as traditional advertising and more as a complete rallying cry for organizations. They allow brands to embed themselves in moments of national meaning, rather than compete for attention within increasingly transactional media environments.

We need look no further than RBC’s long-running commitment to Canadian Olympic sport, most notably through RBC Training Ground. Rather than focusing exclusively on podium visibility, RBC invested in identifying and developing future Olympic talent. The program reframed sponsorship from celebration of success to creation of opportunity.

While some may argue this approach sacrificed short-term attribution, it positioned the brand to build enduring meaning over time. RBC did not simply associate itself with winning; it positioned itself as a builder of potential – a stance aligned with its marketing strategy and its broader role in Canada’s banking landscape.

The provocation for leaders is this: if your organization evaluates Olympic investment using the same logic as short-term performance campaigns, then you are not seeing the value. Olympic sponsorship only works when leadership understands brand as an asset that compounds slowly and pays back over time.

Ivey Impact: Why is comparing the Olympics to the Super Bowl strategically misleading?

MD: The Super Bowl is the most powerful single sporting moment in North America. But it is just that – a finite, concentrated, and creatively competitive moment. Yes, there are great examples of brands using the week leading into, and perhaps out of, the Super Bowl, but in general, the Super Bowl is all about the 134 million viewers that tune in for the big game.

The Olympics are very different.

They are a system that is extended, fragmented, and narratively unpredictable. One rewards bold creative bets. The other rewards strategic long-term planning.

This distinction matters because Olympic marketing does not hinge on a single execution. There is no guaranteed peak, no single audience, and no singular narrative arc.

This is where Olympic marketing exposes weak brand strategy. Brands that rely on isolated campaigns struggle when forced to sustain meaning over weeks. Strong brands, by contrast, use the Olympics as a narrative amplifier, reinforcing values that already exist in their broader brand architecture.

The provocation: if your brand strategy depends on a guaranteed high-impact moment to justify investment, the Olympics will punish you for it. Olympic marketing is not about spectacle. It is about discipline.

Ivey Impact: If traditional metrics fail Olympic marketing, how should leaders measure success?

MD: Olympic sponsorship consistently frustrates executives because it resists conventional measurement. CPMs look inefficient. Short-term sales lifts are often negligible. Attribution is tough to measure. For organizations accustomed to precision, this creates discomfort.

Olympic marketing should be assessed the way leaders assess reputation, trust, and long-term brand equity: longitudinally. Here, the most meaningful indicators are not impressions but association strength, sentiment durability, and cultural relevance over time.

Importantly, Olympic marketing often delivers its greatest value after the Games, when athletes return to communities, narratives persist, and brands remain associated with human development rather than fleeting outcomes. This can be especially impactful when Olympic partners leverage the sponsorship to have athlete keynotes, photo sessions, and other ways to keep the flame lit inside the corporate walls.

The provocation for leaders is uncomfortable but necessary: if your organization demands immediate, attributable ROI from Olympic investment, you are not being rigorous, you are being impatient. Olympic value is real. It is simply operating on a different time horizon than most marketing systems are built to recognize.

Ivey Impact: Are the Olympics still a ‘mass audience’ event, or has that idea become outdated?

MD: The notion of the Olympics as a single, shared viewing experience no longer holds. Today, audiences increasingly engage through highlights, social feeds, clips, and algorithmic discovery, not just linear broadcasts.

In a way, the Olympics have shifted from mass viewing to mass relevance.

Yes, Canadians may still gather around their screens each night, as they have for decades. But we are rarely watching in sync, often following different events, on different platforms, at different times. Even still, few events bind us culturally in the same way. The Olympics are more than sport; they’re an expression of national identity. Medal moments dominate headlines, uniforms trend, athlete stories travel widely, and the Games remain a shared cultural reference point, even if consumption paths are fragmented.

For brands, this demands a strategic shift. The objective is no longer maximum exposure in a single channel. It is meaningful presence wherever the culture surfaces.

The provocation: brands chasing mass reach are chasing the past. Brands shaping mass meaning are playing the future, and the Olympics still offers one of the few stages capable of delivering it.

Ivey Impact: Looking ahead, will Olympic marketing remain worthwhile, or is its value quietly declining?

MD: Olympic marketing is not losing value. Instead, it is becoming more selective.

The brands that argue the Olympics “no longer work” are often those expecting shortcuts: guaranteed attention, simple metrics, and immediate payback. That era is over.

What remains is a platform that rewards strategic maturity. Olympic marketing now demands clarity of purpose, patience in execution, and comfort with ambiguity. The brands that succeed will be the ones that integrate institutional sponsorship, athlete storytelling, digital agility, and long-term measurement into a coherent system.

The provocation for executives is direct: the Olympics have not become less valuable; they have simply exposed which brands were never prepared to earn that value in the first place.

For leaders, and future students of sports marketing, the lesson is clear: Olympic marketing is no longer about buying attention. It is about building meaning at scale, under the most demanding conditions modern marketing can offer. In doing so, it stands as one of the clearest examples of how long-term brand building and the business of sports marketing can perfectly intersect for brands willing to make the investment.

Matthew Diamond is an Angela Armit and Lawrence Tapp–nominated Ivey MBA and AMBA faculty member with more than a decade of teaching experience. Recognized as one of Canada’s thought leaders in sports marketing, he has held leadership roles at the NHL Players’ Association and in the agency world, where he helped conceptualize and sell Kraft Hockeyville to CBC, the NHL, and the NHLPA, now one of the most successful and longest-running sports marketing campaigns in Canadian history.

In his current role as Chief Growth Officer at BIG Digital, a marketing technology company, he works with leading organizations including the NBA, NFL, PGA, OVG and MLSE, as well as other premier brands across North America.