TIER THEREE LOCOG partner Westfield has sold 100 per cent of outdoor advertising inventory, including digital and temporary static sites, at Westfield Stratford City to Olympic sponsors, Frontloaded can reveal.
The advertising inventory was marketed in earnest from June last year and formed part of the auction that allowed LOCOG partners to have first option on outdoor media in London during the Games.
Westfield’s head of Olympic brand alliance Mark Zimmer says he was always confident that Olympic sponsors would sign up – and head off accusations that Westfield was “ambush central".
“Because of our proximity to the Olympic Park we always had an obligation to Olympic sponsors. The feedback in the market was that there would be this high demand,” he says.
Westfield has since identified further outdoor sites that will have value during the Games. These phase two sites, Zimmer adds, will also be sold exclusively to Olympic sponsors.
Meanwhile, around 95 per cent of hospitality sites will go to Olympic sponsors and the broader the Olympic family. The remaining inventory which focuses on 2,000 square metres of refurbished space at the top of an office block will go to “commercial and non-commercial organisations who had legitimately acquired tickets and need small hospitality programmes, ” says Zimmer.
However, there is little possibility that these buyers, which could include international trade delegations and UK sporting bodies, will be competitive to Olympic sponsors thanks to the partnership criteria agreed by Westfield with LOCOG.
For a full report on the Westfield deal see the November issue of Sports Marketing Frontiers.