The next 12 years will see the Chinese e-commerce giant supply technology equipment to the International Olympic Committee to be used in planning the Games, run a Chinese version of the Olympic internet TV channel and support a new shopping platform for the merchandise, reports CNBC.
The founder and CEO of Alibaba, Jack Ma, made announcement of this deal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in the presence of IOC President Thomas Bach.
Alibaba has referred to this deal as a historic one for the company.
The merchandise’ president said that the deal is long term and that they are the first Chinese company to have engaged in such a deal. He hoped that they will be able to empower the Olympic movement.
Alibaba will be tasked with establishing a global e-commerce platform for selling Olympic products to fans.
“All our 206 national Olympic committees will be able to connect better with fans looking for Olympic-licensed products,” said Bach.
This deal will cover the next 6 Olympic Games until 2028 summer Olympics when it expires. This is a total of three winters and three summers.
For supporting the games organizers, Alibaba will be given advertising and promotional use of Olympic marks rights. The online company will also be awarded with rights for imagery from the Olympic Games and National Olympic Committees.
Both IOC and Alibaba have declined to comment on the deal’s financial value.
Alibaba has also partnered with Olympic Channel which was launched after the Rio Olympics to showcase the Olympic content throughout the year online and on Android and iOS Apps.
As explained by Bach, this is a deal that was first brought on the negotiation table one year ago. He said that he got inspiration from Ma “from the very first moment.”
One area that the two envisage friction is counterfeit products on the site. Both the IOC and national organizing committees are usually deeply involved in protecting the Olympic trademarks.
Ma admitted that this isn’t an easy problem but Alibaba was going to invest one billion yuan to fight the matter.
“We are listing more than 1.2 billion products on our site, this is a huge world, governing and managing a world like this is not easy,” he said. He added that with joint efforts, they will be able to create a masterpiece to fight it off.
