Hancock Renews IOC Sponsorship

The John Hancock insurance company, whose president had emerged as the most vociferous corporate critic of the International Olympic Committee, announced today it is re-upping as one of the IOC’s key big-money sponsors.

Hancock President and CEO David F. D’Alessandro and IOC officials said the firm is opting in again to the Olympics’ worldwide sponsorship program, known as TOP--The Olympic Partnership program. The cost to Hancock: about $50 million over the four years ending in 2004, through that year’s Summer Games in Athens, Greece.

The irony in the announcement is inescapable, given D’Alessandro’s persistent criticism last year of the IOC in the wake of the corruption scandal tied to Salt Lake City’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games. He said repeatedly that the IOC needed to be more democratic, more accountable and its records more open to the public that supports the Games.

Because of that criticism, however, Hancock’s renewal dramatically underscores the muted impact in corporate boardrooms of the headline-generating corruption scandal. And it proves again the allure and value of corporate association with the Games.

In a statement, D’Alessandro said his concerns had been addressed by the IOC’s vote in December for a 50-point reform package. “Its members listened to voices for change from inside and outside the organization,” he said.

IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, speaking to reporters at Stadium Australia, the central venue at this September’s Sydney Games, declared that Hancock’s sponsorship renewal proves the Games “were not touched in the crisis we faced in the IOC.”

The IOC launched the TOP program in 1985. Each TOP program runs for four years, essentially beginning after one Summer Games and running through the next--taking in, of course, the Winter Games in between.

TOP revenues are shared between the IOC, the organizing committees in the cities staging the Winter and Summer Games and the roughly 200 national Olympic committees around the world.

Nine of the 11 corporate sponsors in the current incarnation, dubbed TOP IV, which began in 1997 and will conclude after the Sydney Games, are American. Hancock is one of those sponsors.