Sports Sponsorship and Human Rights Due Diligence: An Olympian Dilemma

The Olympic Games will begin in July in London, and the British capital is gearing up for the festivities celebrating the ultimate competition of sporting prowess between nations. With over 200 countries participating in the Games, organising an event on such a scale costs millions of dollars.

Since the 1990s, Olympic Games organising committees have turned to corporate sponsors to help defray the costs. Businesses get publicity; organisers gets resources; spectators presumably get access to the sporting events at a lower cost.

IHRB's Salil Tripathi writes in the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 30/2 about the responsibilities of organisers in deciding from who they should be taking sponsorship money. Organisers of the London Olympics realised they had to confront the question when they found rising international activism and criticism when it was revealed that the American company, Dow Chemical, was one of the sponsors of the Games. Criticism was loud in India, where parliamentarians and former Olympians threatened to launch a stir to boycott India’s participation in the Games, and some activist organisations echoed calls from India