Tweeting About the Olympics - What is a Media Company?

Passle

My colleague James wrote an interesting post regarding entities posting about the Olympics and the US Olympic Committee. The original articles states there is ban for corporate entities. So who was allowed to post content about the Olympics?

If you are a brand you cannot mention the Olympics, competitors or even mention you are supporting the athlete you sponsored. A bit ridiculous if it was your child competing! The key here is to have a business relationship with the US Olympic Committee.

However if you are a media company like buzzfeed or Huffington post you can reference Olympics in posts including images.

This raises an ever growing question - what makes a media company? With Amazon owning Washington Post and therefore have the ability to repost etc through this account can Amazon talk about the Olympics?

In the world of growing content and individual’s expert opinion becoming even more valuable the best B2B organisations are becoming media companies. It will be interesting to see what happens during 2020 but no doubt all US entities will want to be classed as a media company by then.

I had heard that the organisers of the Olympics are control freaks but this is extreme. With a heavy-handed legal letter the US Olympic Committee are warning any organisation that is not a sponsor that they cannot tweet about the Olympics. I get that they want to protect their brand from ambush marketing but it just seems ridiculous that you can trademark hashtags. It also seems to be entirely focused on a B2C perspective. What about B2B? What about individuals tweeting about the Olympics who work for a non-sponsor (like me)?