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SPONSORED BY VISA, brought to you by GE and made possible, in part, by Coca-Cola, the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games floated in a sea of corporate sponsorships. The Olympic Games have long been a valuable marketing venue for multinational tiffany & co jewellery, but commercialism around the Beijing 2008 Olympics reached a whole new level as virtually every facet of the Games was auctioned off to the highest bidder.

The Beijing Olympics featured an "official noodles sponsor," an "official leather goods supplier" and an "air humidifier and purifier exclusive supplier," along with dozens of other official sponsorship arrangements from prominent and obscure companies alike.Corporate sponsors showered millions of dollars on each tier of the Olympic organizational committees: from the International Olympic Committee, the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and tiffany and co pendants international federations governing each individual sport, to each country's National Olympic Committees. Corporations sponsor many Olympic teams and national governing bodies for particular sports - including virtually every national governing body in the United States - and individual athletes themselves.

Corporate sponsors raced to sign up for Olympic partnerships because of the unique opportunity to access China's enormous and growing market of middle-class consumers. Companies from Adidas to McDonald's initiated a marketing blitz around the first Olympics ever to be hosted by a Chinese city.Official Olympic bodies eagerly exploited the opportunity. The 2008 Olympic Marketing Plan Overview of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (BOCOG) announced, "For international entities looking to expand into the thriving Chinese marketplace, a partnership with the 2008 Olympic Games will deliver a powerful tiffany and co rings opportunity for growth and product/service showcasing, while serving to strengthen and build ties of friendship throughout China." A record 63 companies became sponsors or partners of the Beijing Olympics, and Olympic-related advertising in China alone reached an estimated $4 billion to $6 billion, according to CSM, a Beijing marketing research firm.

"This year in particular, the commercialism is far more intense than previous Olympics," says sports commentator Dave Zirin. He calls the Olympics a "commercial, privatized, hyper-logoed atmosphere.""It is something that has certainly accelerated as part of the Olympic Games since 1984, which was the first privately funded Olympic Games. This year is like commercialization on steroids," Zirin says.The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.FAILING TO CURB COMMERCIALISM

The IOC acknowledges that excessive commercialism threatens the tiffany and co bracelets of the Games, as well as conflicts with the official ideology of "Olympism," which venerates healthful living and celebrates a pure blend of sport, culture and education. The IOC bans sponsorships from tobacco or hard liquor companies, or "other products that may conflict with or be considered inappropriate to the mission of the IOC or to the spirit of Olympism." The IOC prohibits billboards or advertising in Olympic stadiums or sports venues, and forbids NASCAR-style ads on athlete's uniforms. Also prohibited is the use of images of Olympic events from being broadcast with any kind of commercial association.

However, corporate sponsors were adept at finding the loopholes and limitations in these restrictions. Although athletes and officials were barred from wearing ads, manufacturer logos were allowed on uniforms and equipment. Adidas capitalized on this loophole by providing sportswear for all staff, volunteers and technical officials of the 2008 Games - apparel that carried Adidas' widely recognizable logo. Equipment used by athletes also prominently displayed manufacturer logos. Visa circumvented the ban on use of Olympic imagery with an ad campaign based around footage of past Olympic performances. And while distilled spirits tiffany and co cufflinks were banned, beer and wine marketing was not.