The newest event at the 2024 Olympics: Luxury
LVMH is the biggest local sponsor for this summer’s Paris Games. It’s also designing the medals, making French athletes’ uniforms and stocking VIP suites.
The Olympics are coming to Paris and, despite promises of a more austere, more sober event, the world’s largest luxury company is treating them like the ultimate home game. LVMH, the group headed by Bernard Arnault, is pulling out all the stops to take over Paris 2024.
One of its jewellers, Chaumet, is designing gold, silver and bronze medals for the Olympics and Paralympics. One of its fashion brands, Berluti, is creating the uniforms that French athletes will wear during a lavish opening ceremony on the Seine. Moët Champagne and Hennessy cognac will flow through every VIP suite. And Louis Vuitton leather goods, which are already used to ferry prizes such as the World Cup and the NBA Finals trophy, will be impossible to miss at the Games.
That kind of ubiquity across the monthlong extravaganza of the Olympics and the Paralympics cost LVMH some 150 million euros, or about $248 million, according to a person familiar with the deal, making the group the single largest local sponsor of Paris 2024.
“The Games are in Paris and LVMH represents the image of France,” said Antoine Arnault, Bernard’s eldest son and the chairman of Berluti. “We couldn’t not be a part of it.” More than simply hitching the conglomerate’s wagon to the Olympics, the move reflects a larger strategic push into sports by the world’s top luxury companies. They realise that a growing share of their business depends on aspirational consumers they can reach through hugely popular events that ditch old-school exclusivity – some 60 per cent of global luxury sales today come from people who spend less than €2,000 a year on luxury goods, according to Boston Consulting Group.
Not so long ago, mass-appeal sporting events were seen as beneath the highest-end luxury brands, which preferred to target jet-setting country-clubbers through golf, tennis, polo, sailing and Formula One. But in the age of social media, where athletes seamlessly cross into the global influence market alongside pop stars and Hollywood actors, their reach – and universal appeal – has become too significant to pass up.
In 2022, the person with the largest following in the history of social media, Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, cropped up in a Louis Vuitton campaign. Sitting across a chess board from him was his greatest rival, Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Though the two players were never in the same place for the Annie Leibovitz photo shoot, it didn’t prevent the ad from becoming one of the most liked images ever posted on Instagram.
Ahead of the Games, Vuitton sponsored a fencer and a swimmer, while LVMH’s Dior has backed a gymnast and a wheelchair tennis player.
Many of LVMH’s competitors have taken a similar tack. Last summer, Prada sponsored China’s national team at the women’s World Cup – the post announcing the sponsorship was viewed 300 million times on Chinese social-media platform Weibo. Gucci signed up a stable of athletes including the English soccer player Jack Grealish and the Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner. But none has attempted to co-opt an entire event the size of the Olympics.
For Paris 2024, the deal represents a delicate trade-off. Organisers have promised a more reasonable approach to the Games, designed for the masses without the overspending that has defined recent Olympics. While LVMH’s money helps Paris 2024 reach its goal of being almost entirely privately funded – the current figure is 97 per cent, organisers say – the company’s brands cultivate a high-end image that’s potentially at odds with the idea of a toned-down Olympics.
Complicating matters is Bernard Arnault’s image in France: One of the world’s richest men is a lightning rod here for discontent over growing inequality. Still, LVMH points out that its portfolio includes many more affordable brands, such as the cosmetics giant Sephora and several midrange Champagnes. And the Olympic spotlight, for all of the extra scrutiny it invites, represented an irresistible opportunity to burnish its status as the flag-bearer for French taste, corporate might and savoir-faire.
“Our craftsmen are perfectionists, just like top athletes and coaches,” Bernard Arnault said. “And our houses carry the image of France throughout the world.” Sponsors are betting that as the Olympics unfold from July 26 to Aug. 11, they will become the most appealing Games in over a decade. Preparation has been relatively drama-free, without the time and budget overruns that have beset previous editions. Concerns over congested public transit and high prices for tickets and hotel rooms have hardly deterred sponsors. The prospect of a Parisian backdrop and an opening ceremony with athletes on barges cruising down the Seine is a much easier sell than some of the challenging locations the event has visited since London 2012. There was Sochi 2014, under the supervision of Vladimir Putin, followed by the chaos of Rio 2016, the remoteness of Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018, and the pandemic Games of Tokyo 2021 and Beijing 2022.
“You have to convince your partners, you have to show them that it’s going to be worthwhile,” said Tony Estanguet, the former Olympic canoeist in charge of the Paris 2024 organising committee. “Companies don’t become partners just to please Estanguet.” The Olympics always lean heavily on hometown sponsors, but LVMH’s involvement will be the most eye-catching of Paris 2024’s 60 or so major partners. People familiar with the process note that LVMH has been the most demanding by some distance. During negotiations, the company went as far as to push for creative input on the opening ceremony, which will snake past the Louis Vuitton headquarters, LVMH’s Samaritaine department store and its Cheval Blanc hotel. It took a personal meeting between Arnault and International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach in December 2022 to pave the way to a deal.
Then, when the time came to unveil the partnership last summer, exactly one year before the Games, LVMH announced it not with a traditional news conference, but in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on the Champ de Mars, with the IOC’s Bach in attendance.
“This embodies what France does best,” Antoine Arnault said at the time. “Heritage, ambition, creativity, excellence.” From its stable of jewellers, which includes Tiffany’s and Bulgari, the company tapped Chaumet, a Paris-based house that predates the French Revolution, to carry out the high-pressure task of designing the medals. So Chaumet delved into an archive of 66,000 drawings for inspiration while operating within the constraints imposed by the IOC – and its own bosses.
“When we make a special order we usually have a customer who is quite flexible,” said Benoît Verhulle, the 13th workshop chief in the history of Chaumet. “Here, it was really super-strict. We had to stick to an entire design within a cylinder of 8.5 centimetres.” Berluti, LVMH’s Paris-based shoemaker and clothing designer, received the equally high-profile assignment to make around 1,300 outfits for the French delegation to wear during the Olympic and Paralympic opening ceremonies. The company’s designers were told that, despite being founded by an Italian, Berluti’s work needed to capture French elegance and craftsmanship.
And there was one other design note to be respected. The uniforms would all have a few words stitched into an inside pocket: LVMH Artisan of All Victories.
The Wall Street Journal
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