Japanese sponsors Toyota, Bridgestone and Panasonic end Olympic contracts

TOKYO (AP) — The three main Japanese sponsors of the International Olympic Committee — Toyota, Panasonic and Bridgestone — are ending their contracts.

This leaves the IOC without a Japanese sponsor and it is expected that the focus will now shift to the Middle East and India for new sponsorship income.

Japanese sponsors have turned away from the Olympics, likely due to the one-year delay in hosting the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The delay reduced sponsors’ visibility as fans were not allowed to visit competition venues, increased costs and exposed a host of corruption scandals surrounding the Games.

The three are among the fifteen so-called TOP Olympic sponsors. The fifteen paid a total of more than 2 billion dollars to the IOC in the past four-year Olympic cycle.

Toyota Motor Corp. confirmed it would not renew its sponsorship beyond the Paris Games, which concluded in August.

Chairman Akio Toyoda told a meeting of U.S. dealers last month that the IOC’s goals did not match the automaker’s vision.

“To be honest, I’m not sure they (IOC) are really focused on putting people first. For me, the Olympic Games should simply be about watching athletes from all walks of life, with all kinds of challenges, achieve their impossible results,” Toyoda said in English.

Toyoda pledged to continue to financially support individual Olympic and Paralympic athletes, as well as the Paralympic Games.

Toyota had a contract worth $835 million, the IOC’s largest when it was announced in 2015. It spanned four Olympic Games, starting with the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Games in South Korea and continuing through to the just completed Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris.

The IOC TOP sponsors are: ABInBev, Airbnb, Alibaba, Allianz, Atos, Bridgestone, Coca-Cola, Deloitte, Intel, Omega, Panasonic, P&G, Samsung, Toyota and Visa.

Tiremaker Bridgestone Corp., an Olympic sponsor since 2014, said this week it will not renew its deal with the IOC after it expires this year.

“The decision comes after a review of the company’s evolving brand strategy and its renewed commitment to more endemic global motorsports platforms,” the Tokyo-based company said in a statement.

Electronics giant Panasonic Corp., an IOC sponsor since 1987, said last month it was ending its sponsorship and gave no reason. The decision came after “assessments of how sponsorship should evolve.”

The Tokyo Games were embroiled in corruption scandals related to local sponsorship and contract awarding. Dentsu Inc, the major Japanese marketing and PR company, was the marketing arm of the Tokyo Olympics and raised a record $3.3 billion in local sponsorship money.

This is separate from TOP sponsors.

French prosecutors have also looked into alleged vote buying in the IOC’s 2013 decision to choose Tokyo to host the 2020 Summer Games.

The IOC had an income of $7.6 billion in the last four-year cycle ending with the Tokyo Games. Figures for the cycle ending with the Olympic Games in Paris have not yet been released.

The IOC’s TOP sponsors paid more than $2 billion during that period. In the next cycle, this figure could rise to $3 billion.

Japan officially spent $13 billion on the Tokyo Olympics, at least half of which was government money. A government audit found that the actual costs were twice as high. The IOC’s contribution was approximately $1.8 billion.