Olympic brand must engage young Britons, to deliver for legacy and sponsors
Almost a quarter of British adults, 11.7m people say they are very likely to follow coverage and results from Beijing next month. This is likely to translate into a large core audience for the BBC, with a further 9 million quite likely to dip into coverage.
Nevertheless, research findings from BMRB’s TGI Sport+ survey suggest that the Beijing Olympics is struggling to engage with younger audiences in Britain, that it aspires to reach for both social and commercial reasons.
Among 15-24s, only 15% are very likely to follow, compared to intention scores of 21% for Euro 2008 and 27% for the Champions League, recorded earlier this year.
Critically for London 2012, 24% of these 15-24s consider themselves very likely to follow the Olympics when they come to London in four years. This suggests that while the London Games has relevance to a younger British audience, the main Olympic brand is less engaging.
Beijing followers are receptive to sponsorship, but don’t necessarily use Olympic sponsor brands more
Beijing followers are more receptive to the idea of commercial sponsorship of the Games than most, being considerably more likely than the average adult to agree that sponsoring the Olympics gives companies a better image.
However, their predisposition towards Olympic sponsors doesn’t necessarily translate into brand choice. Those very likely to follow Beijing are no more or less likely than the average to choose the Olympic sponsor over its main rival, an observation which applies to both Coke vs Pepsi and McDonalds vs Burger King. Indeed, in these categories, Beijing followers are less likely to use the leading brands at all.
The older, more affluent profile of British Beijing followers means they are more likely than average to have a credit card, but again, Visa’s Olympic sponsorship does not appear to gain it share against Mastercard.
Britons remain unconvinced that Team GB will perform very well in Beijing, but are positive about the Olympics’ contribution to society
In a separate BMRB Omnibus survey of 3,000 British adults aged 16-64, carried out over recent weeks, 45% expected Team GB to perform very well versus 42% who did not expect it. Young people (47% of 16-24s) and Women (48%) were only slightly more likely to have a positive expectation.
Although many may not expect great performances, 80% of respondents (and 82% of 16-24s) agreed that Olympic medal winners inspire young people to be more active, lending support to elite funding as a tool to drive general partipation.
This also suggests that in order to better engage with young people, Olympic sponsors may consider making more use of the stars that the Games create.
Finally, young people are optimistic about the Olympics’ ability to build a peaceful and better world, one of the objectives of the Olympic Charter. 49% of 16-24s agree that this is the case, compared to 39% who disagree. This group is however divided on mixing sport and politics: 40% agree, while an equal number disagree that Team GB should use Beijing as an opportunity to protest about China’s behaviour in Tibet.
These data are taken from the latest wave of BMRB’s TGI Sport+ survey, conducted between October 2007 and March 2008, and from the weekly BMRB Online Omnibus survey.
Sport+ is available to TGI subscribers or via BMRB Sport’s consultancy services. For more information, please contact:
James Smythe Director, BMRB Sport James.smythe@bmrb.co.uk 020 8433 4456 07881 686262
