For the global consumer giants that sponsor the Olympics, the Beijing Winter Games will be a high-wire act of marketing.
The events are a showcase in one of the most important markets for the Games’ biggest sponsors, including Intel Corp., Procter & Gamble Co., Coca-Cola Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. Not all disclose how much annual revenue they generate in China, but Bloomberg data and analysis by Strategy Risks, a U.S. firm that measures corporate exposure to China, suggest that 10 of the 12 top overseas sponsors combine to bring in $110 billion a year there.
Outside of China, though, politicians and human rights groups have been pushing those same companies, as well as their competitors, to use their platform to condemn Beijing’s treatment of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, which the U.S. and some European lawmakers say is a genocide. Some have also called for at least a diplomatic boycott of the games.