Savikalpa Thapa, Pune
The Updated Rule 40 of the Olympics ensures freedom of speech and expression of the players, team personnel and team Officials involved, adhering to the Olympic values, basic principles and rules set by the International Olympic Committee(IOC).
The players are allowed to promote their sponsors and the sponsors are allowed to use the players’ images during the Game period while adhering to the principles set by the IOC. Olympics partners can use the player’s image with consent, following their terms of contract with the Paris 2024 Organization Committee for Olympic Games, IOC or NOC and respecting the supplementary guidelines issued by the NOC and IOC.
Non-Olympic Partners can use the players’ image with consent, respecting IOC and NOC policies and informing IOC about the Generic Advertising plans.
Participants are allowed to make appreciative posts for Olympic or Non-Olympic Partners in their personal social accounts adhering to the IOC and NOC policies without implying that the product or service enhanced their performance.
Reposting from the IOC’s, the Paris 2024 OCOG or NOC’s social media account is allowed without reference to Non-Olympics Partners.
In 2016 Olympics, Rule 40 was put into effect to safeguard the official Olympic Partners from the competition from non-Olympic partners. It aimed to prevent over-commercialization of the Olympic brand and providing exclusive marketing rights to the Official Sponsors however it prevented the players having their own company sponsors, restricting their apparels, freedom of speech and expression on social media.
In 2016 Sally Bergeson, CEO of Oiselle ingeniously spoke about the challenges faced by non-official sponsors like Oiselle without using the words restricted by the Rule 40 of IOC.
She said, “I want to tell you about the Big Event in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s in a city that rhymes with Neo Bee Sin Arrow and involves a series of contests in the season after spring. Winners receive awards made of a metal Californians sought in the late 1840s, while second and third-place finishers get prizes carved from less precious substances. Oh, and it’s all happening in August of MMXVI.”