Toyota has signed up as a major sponsor of the 2020 summer Olympic Games in Tokyo to provide vehicles and mobility services.
The deal, to the end of 2024, is effective immediately with Toyota enjoying sponsorship rights in Japan to the end of 2016. Global rights will take effect from the start of 2017.
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Product categories include vehicles (including passenger cars, urban mobility vehicles and commercial vehicles), mobility services (including vehicle and road safety and transportation support systems and services) and transportation and mobility support products.
Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda said: “The addition of a mobility category is an important recognition for our entire industry.”
A US report noted Toyota was the first automaker to reach “the highest echelon of Olympics sponsorship” and that the deal was likely to include significant product placement at the games.
The automaker has not disclosed the cost of the deal.
Media analysts have noted in the past that Olympics advertising has worked well for McDonald’s and Coca-Cola in pushing brand awareness in emerging markets, the report added.
Tokyo last hosted the summer Olympics in summer 1964, two years before Toyota launched its Corolla which went on to be a global best seller. Only a year earlier, the automaker had embarked on its first overseas car assembly project, building the Tiara in Australia.
