What Happens to Huge Sponsors If US Pulls Out of 2018 Winter Olympics?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 5:41AM EST · Published Dec 7, 6:35AM EST

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What Happens to Huge Sponsors If US Pulls Out of 2018 Winter Olympics? — © Thinkstock

Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said whether Team USA will participate in the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, is an “open question.” The reason is because of fear of an attack from North Korea, which would put the lives of American athletes in jeopardy. That leaves another open question, which is what will happen to the huge companies that have spent tens of millions of dollars to sponsor these Olympics.

The Team USA sponsors are a who’s who of America’s largest companies: Coca-Cola, Visa, Toyota, General Electric, Intel, Procter & Gamble, Alibaba, Bridgestone, Atos, Omega, Samsung, Panasonic and DowDuPont.

Sponsors could ask for some portion of their money back. Whether that would happen is likely a legal issue, and at least some of the money already might have been spent. There may be little money to refund.

A collapse of U.S. participation may also have a domino effect. Sponsors may shy away from future games because of the risk the South Korea games represent, although it is unique due to the extraordinary threat it represents.

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There is a precedent for a boycott, although on a very different basis. The United States stayed out of the 1980 games in Russian because of that nation’s invasion of Afghanistan. However, for sponsors the reason may not matter much. It still means a loss of a large investment and opportunity to get global exposure. The trouble with North Korea may take a new set of victims.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.