Puma Extends Sponsorship Contract With Bolt, Making Sprint Star Top Earner

Puma AG, Europe’s second-largest sporting-goods maker, extended a sponsorship contract with Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt until the end of 2013, making the Jamaican the world’s most highly sponsored runner.

Bolt will play a “pivotal role” in Puma’s marketing for the 2012 London Olympics, the Herzogenaurach, Germany-based company said today in a statement. The value of the new contract is “by far the largest ever given to a track & field athlete,” Puma said, without providing a figure.

Puma first sponsored Bolt in 2003 when he was aged 16. The sporting goods maker, which also outfits Jamaica’s bobsled team, this year introduced the “Bolt Collection,” a range of apparel, footwear and accessories co-designed with the sprinter.

Puma said last year that the 100-meter and 200-meter world records set by Bolt during the Berlin world championships had “media value” for the company of more than 83 million euros ($105 million), an amount it would have to spend for similar exposure from regular advertising. Should he repeat his achievements, that would increase to a “triple-digit million- euro range” Chief Executive Officer Jochen Zeitz said today.

Bolt won three gold medals at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. He ran the 100 meters in 9:58 seconds and the 200 meters in 19:19 seconds last year, faster than any other athlete, though won’t compete again this year due to a lower back problem.

Isinbayeva

“He’s shined a global spotlight on the sport,” Zeitz said in the statement. “We’re not sure he’s even hit his top gear yet.” Puma’s London Olympics campaign will start early in 2011.

Russian pole vault world-record holder and Olympic champion Yelena Isinbayeva currently has the biggest sponsorship contract of any track and field athlete, getting $1.5 million from Chinese sporting-goods maker Li Ning Co. Ltd., according to market researcher Veit Wolff at Sport & Markt in Cologne.

Puma last month canceled a full-year forecast for growth in earnings before taxes because of a trademark dispute in Spain, saying it expects sales growth in the “low to mid-single digits” and gross margins to be unchanged from a year earlier.

The company will disclose details in October of its so- called Phase IV Revisited program, which aims to boost annual revenue to more than 4 billion euros by 2015. The company had sales of 2.46 billion euros last year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Holger Elfes in Dusseldorf at helfes@bloomberg.net.

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