By Keith Weir
LONDON Aug 7 (Reuters) – Major sponsors are delighted with
how London has staged the Games while the enthusiasm generated
by the success of the British team is also a plus, International
Olympic Committee (IOC) marketing chief Gerhard Heiberg said on
Tuesday.
Britain had a strong record of organising big sporting
events and the IOC had always been confident it would put on a
good show, Heiberg said, but the growing tally of British gold
medals has lifted the atmosphere in London.
“Everybody feels at home, everybody talks to each other,
everybody is roaring and of course the sponsors, the IOC we feel
this strongly,” he told Reuters.
Both television and sponsors were being well served by the
Games which end on Aug. 12, Heiberg said, with a cumulative TV
audience of 4.8 billion people.
“Of course they see the joy, the enthusiasm, people smiling,
laughing, hugging each other,” he said.
“It goes all over the world, it’s good for Britain,” he
added in an interview on the fringes of an international sport
business symposium at London’s Birkbeck College.
Heiberg was himself the head of the organising committee for
the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer in his native Norway.
The Olympic movement is funded by television revenues of
around $4 billion over a four-year cycle and earns a further $1
billion from 11 international companies who are its global
sponsors.
Continued…
