The restrictions are intended to ensure that businesses working on the Games do not promote themselves in a way that undermines the rights of official London 2012 and International Olympic Committee (IOC) sponsors.

However, Olympic Park contractors questioned for the London 2012 – a global showcase for UK plc report by Sir John Armitt, chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), identified restrictions on publicising their involvement as a negative factor in their Olympic experience.

According to one contractor cited in the report: "To get any real commercial benefit, companies need to be allowed to demonstrate that they...are indeed working on the London 2012 Games and this is virtually impossible in any real sense at the moment".

Another company was said to have remarked: "Once the Games are complete and the headline sponsors have had their moment in the sunshine, businesses involved in the 2012 Games should be able to promote that explicitly in trade magazines and marketing collateral".

In a list of responses published along with the report, the Government said it understood and backed the reasons for implementing restrictions to protect the marketing exclusivity of London 2012 sponsors.

However, it was committed to "find a way to ensure that contractors and sub-contractors can seek a form of recognition of their superb contribution to the Games to support them in competing for new contract opportunities".

The Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) was in discussion with the British Olympic Association (BOA) and hoped to have a "workable solution in place through which supplier companies can make reference to the work they have undertaken by the end of 2012".

Discussions, it said, would run into the autumn.


Armitt's report also urged UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) to create a "small task force", drawing on the expertise of London 2012 contractors, to "target major overseas opportunities and work to ensure British companies can compete for, and win, contracts".

The Government responded that UKTI had developed a "comprehensive strategy" to maximise future opportunities on the back of the Games.

UKTI, it said, would focus on markets in Russia, Brazil, Qatar and South Korea (all future World Cup and/or Olympic hosts) as "part of its prioritisation of high value opportunities and projects".

As a first step, a "major conference" would be hosted in the autumn for UK suppliers to London 2012 and other sports events to "explore the opportunities, methods of undertaking business in priority markets and support that UKTI can provide".

A detail on page eight of the report highlights a potential obstacle in the path of companies hoping that their work on London's Olympic Park might be a passport to contracts on other sports mega-projects around the world.

"British businesses built the Olympic Park," the report says.

"All but two per cent (37) of the 1,604 top-level contracts directly awarded by the ODA have gone to companies registered in the United Kingdom."

Should other mega-event hosts award a similar proportion of contracts to their own domestic companies, the pickings on offer to firms from Britain – and elsewhere – might prove disappointingly slim.

The Armitt report and the Government's response can be accessed here. 

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