• by Todd Wasserman , January 16, 2023

Image above: a big bunch of mascots for the Paris Olympics.

It seems like we just got through the Olympics, but here comes the promotions for the summer 2024 games

NBC has rolled out an ad featuring Paris Hilton (get it?) to celebrate the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

The games won’t play out until a year and a half from now, but the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics have already introduced a mascot (a personification of a Phrygian cap, the red bonnet famously worn by French symbol Marianne); sponsors (Danone, maker of Dannon yogurt), Sanofi, Airbnb, Bridgestone, Coca-Cola, Intel, Panasonic, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, Toyota and Visa, among others);  and contingency plans if COVID were to reemerge (“There’s no official Plan B, but we’re identifying the risks and solutions,” Tony Estanguet, the head of the organizing committee, told Reuters).

At the moment, medical publication The Lancet says that the COVID pandemic is “far from over.” To underscore the point, a new omnicron subvariant, XBB1.5, is spreading across the U.S.

Paris’s first Olympics since 1924 has a budget of $7.71 billion with about $1.1 billion coming from sponsors.

The last summer Olympics were in Tokyo. Of course, those games took place in the first year of the pandemic.

It’s anyone’s guess whether COVID will still be able to hobble another Olympics, or whether Paris 2024 will present a clean break from the past. But sponsors so far seem to be optimistic about the latter.