The Golden Triangle
The relationship between the event, sponsorship and Television is referred to as the ‘Golden Triangle’. TV companies now pay enormous amounts of money to have exclusive rights to games and because of the ever increasing global audience, it creates and ideal opportunity for a business to get it commercial message across. 90% of the Olympic budget is now generated through corporate sponsorship and TV rights, which help offset the increasing costs of staging the games.
TV companies and sponsors now have power to control timing and scheduling of events. For example, the timings of the 1996 Atlanta 200m finals were moved, where Michael Johnson competed in, and ultimately won both the 200m and 400m in the famous gold Nike racing spikes, seen across the globe by millions of viewers. Events such as tennis have been re-introduction with breaks, allowing regular advertising opportunities.
The decision on who hosts the Games now includes a commercial element; with the emphasis on technology it means a TV audience of billions watch the games. It was estimated that a 6th of the World population watched the 2008 Beijing Games.
To have a successful outcome the media must stress the following components:
World Games Gains From the Media
The world games gain a number of benefits from media interest:
The organisers of world games want to achieve as much publicity as possible for their product. Increased publicity attracts sponsorship and advertising revenues, the money can be re-invested in the sport, to improve the sport, and to pay the costs of staging the games. This then can be described as a symbiotic relationship between the media and world games; there is a mutual benefit to each other.
Negative Aspects of Media Coverage