Petrobras Revokes Olympic Sponsorships

05/16/2017 - 12h03

Petrobras decided to revoke sponsorships for 5 Olympic Confederation sports which it had been supporting since 2011.

At a reunion last month, the state-owned company notified each entity's director that it won't be sponsoring boxing, taekwondo, fencing, rowing and weightlifting during the preparations for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Brazilian boxing and taekwondo athletes earned medals at the Games in Rio last August - Robson Conceição earned a gold medal, while Maicon Andrade earned a bronze medal. Brazilian boxers had already earned three medals at London-2012, when the country already sponsored the sport.

From 2011 to January of 2017 - a period in which the country most heavily invested in the Brazilian Olympic team - Petrobras spent around R$ 80.5 million (US$ 25 million) in Olympic sponsorships.

Aside from the 5 sports mentioned above, the company also supported athletes pertaining to 15 different modalities, which it called "Team Petrobras". Among the athletes who made up the team were Rio medalists Isaquias Queiroz, Serginho, Mayra Aguiar and paralympic swimmer Daniel Dias.

Petrobras, which is in the eye of the hurricane of the Lava Jato operation, ended 2016 with a R$ 14.8 billion (US$ 4.8 billion) deficit. The company, which was among the biggest in the world, signalled that it has started turning things around recently: it earned a R$ 4.44 billion (US$ 1.4 billion) profit for the first quarter of 2017.

OTHER SIDE

Petrobras confirmed that it brought sponsorships for the five modalities to an end - the contracts ended in January.

Despite not maintaining any contractual ties to the Olympic Confederation currently, the company said that "sponsoring olympic sports will continue to be a part of Petrobras' communications campaign, which will adopt a new strategy that will take into account the new challenges surrounding the company's image as well as the brand's reputation.

Translated by THOMAS MATHEWSON

Read the article in the original language