Is corporate America conducting a quiet boycott of the Sochi Olympics and opting for summer soccer in Brazil instead?
High costs, security risks and lack of decent hotel accommodation are prompting some corporations to scale back on attendance at the Sochi Olympics, say a host of sports marketing executives.
“These games, we sent the fewest visitors in more than two decades,” Robert Tuchman, president at sports branding agency Goviva told The Post. “We’re usually sending 500 people, this year we’re sending 20.”
Tuchman who is already on site at Sochi has been inundated with offers from ticket brokers who are overloaded with tickets for premium events such as ice hockey to ice skating.
Tuchman reports that ticket prices have fallen some 25 percent in the past three weeks. Figure skating, usually among the priciest events, might now cost between $350 and $400. On Monday, many of the best seats in the Iceberg Skating Palace were still unsold at $3,133.29 apiece.
For snowboarding, also a hot ticket at the Winter Games, $188 tickets, also available Monday morning would put you right down in front.
The well documented hotel accommodation problems — dirty water coming out of faucets, lack of doors, unfinished hotels have seen corporate executives scrambling to get a decent place to stay.
“A lot of advertisers have declined going,” said another source. “NBC had to scale back their client entertainment,” added a person familiar with plans. The main corporate sponsors include Coca-Cola, General Electric, Procter & Gamble and McDonalds. These huge global corporations also had to deal with massive pressure at home over their silence on the issue of Russian laws against homosexuality.
Another Madison Avenue executive said that NBC had also reduced the number of sales executives who typically come along to entertain marketers.
One media insider said Sunday that the winter weather had prevented NBC from sending some staff and sponsors as early as planned but that once the delay was overcome the same number would attend.
Recent terrorism incidents have also pushed up insurance premiums for top business executives making it much more expensive to travel to these games than other to other Olympics.
“There’s a lot of scaling back of the brand teams and the ones that are going are making a tremendous investment in emergency removal,” a top branding expert, Jarrod Moses, told The Post.
Despite the lower than usual number of Americans attending the Winter Games this year, Sochi officials claim more than 80 percent of the tickets have been sold. It is not known if the tickets had to be discounted to move.
Some top corporate executives have plans to evacuate via helicopters and ships should the worst occur.
Pricey insurance and difficulty obtaining visas have pushed up the cost of getting to Sochi. The cost of a New York package to an Olympics is between $7,000 and $12,000. But terrorism insurance costs have added thousands of dollars to the totals.
“It’s crazy. I have never experienced anything like this for any major sports event,” added Tuchman who explained that American executives were passing on the Olympics and opting for the FIFA World Cup in Brazil in June instead.
“The terrorism, the lack of hotel rooms, the visa situation, the local political gay rights and the distance. So many people held back this year because of the World Cup in Brazil,” said Tuchman.