Delivery company UPS joins London 2012 sponsorship

Written by Admin | 30 September 2009

By ROBERT MILLWARD

- AP Sports Writer

LONDON — UPS became the latest sponsor of the London 2012 Olympics on Wednesday, and the delivery company will manage the local organizing committee's transportation and logistics over the next three years in a part-cash, part-services partnership.

The organizing committee announced that UPS had become its fifth tier two supporter and 22nd commercial sponsor overall as it chases a revised target of $1.13 billion in private sector income.

Although no financial details of the sponsorship were released, reports say the deal is worth $32 million.

"We are at about ($884 million) in the total value of the sponsorship program," said London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton. "Our original target was ($1.05 billion) but we have now raised that to ($1.13 billion)."

Deighton said businesses were more likely to offer sponsorship with the worst of the recession over.

"People are planning for recovery now rather than getting through the worst of it so that's a good thing."

He said the deal with UPS was more about services than cash.

"It doesn't really matter because these are services that we need and UPS can provide them. In the other areas of sponsorship they don't provide services as part of the games, so their partnership is cash," Deighton said.

"For us, this is as good as cash because we absolutely need the services they are going to provide for us."

UPS was a provider to last year's games in Beijing and was a partner at Atlanta in 1996, the Nagano Winter Games two years later and Sydney in 2000.

"UPS is committed to helping London make these Games an unparalleled success and it's a great honor to be entrusted again with such a tremendous responsibility," said Dan Brutto, president of UPS International.

The other tier two supporters are Adecco, Cadbury, Cisco and Deloitte. The organizers also have six tier one partners - Adidas, BP, British Airways, BT, EDF and Lloyds TSB.