The PyeongChang Organising Committee for the 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (POCOG) has enhanced its commercial portfolio by signing International Olympic Committee ‘TOP’ partner Samsung as its sixth top-tier domestic sponsor.
The Korean conglomerate has agreed to support POCOG with a sponsor package valued at KRW100bn (€83.6m/$88.5m) to become a domestic partner working in various business areas across the Samsung group.
Samsung joins Korean Air, KT, Youngone Outdoor (the North Face brand), Pagoda Education Group and Samil PricewaterhouseCoopers as a top-tier PyeongChang 2018 partner, with POCOG having revealed that the deal has lifted the organising committee to 41 per cent of its sponsorship income target. South Korea’s national airline Korean Air last month signed an official partnership agreement with POCOG, helping to address criticism levelled at PyeongChang 2018 for its failure to attract major domestic sponsors.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye in February called on more companies in the country to support PyeongChang’s hosting of the Games. POCOG president Cho Yang-ho said: “We are confident that this (Samsung) sponsorship agreement will encourage other Korean companies to join as sponsors for the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.”
In August, Samsung extended its worldwide TOP partnership with the International Olympic Committee through to 2020, becoming the IOC’s final existing top-tier partner to commit through to the Tokyo Games in five years' time. Samsung’s first Olympic Games as a TOP partner was the 1998 winter Olympics in Nagano and its extended deal takes in the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro; the 2018 winter Games, in PyeongChang; Tokyo 2020 and all Youth Olympic Games during this period.