Adidas in £2.25m deal to run Metro cover wraps during London Olympics

Adidas has struck a £2.25m deal to run cover wraps around freesheet Metro every day of London Olympics, making it the largest newspaper advertising deal of the 2012 Games.

Adidas, an official sponsor of the London 2012 Olympics, said that deal marks its biggest ever print ad campaign.

The deal, which is understood to be worth about £2.25m, will see collectable cover wraps of Team GB athletes run on the 17 days of the main Olympic Games, beginning on Friday.

Adidas has used an artist or illustrator to create images of stars including Jessica Ennis, Sir Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Tom Daley, each of which has been timed to appear on a day when the athlete is competing.

The first day of the campaign, which will be for the opening ceremony on Friday, will feature an image of several Team GB competitors.

"A consecutive cover wrap of this scale has never been done before, and demonstrates our commitment to driving stand-out as a partner of London 2012," said Nick Craggs, UK marketing director at Adidas.

"For the Olympics, Metro will be publishing seven days a week, so we wanted stand-out," said Kenny Campbell, editor of the Associated Newspapers freesheet.

The launch of the campaign ups the ante in the battle between Adidas, which has paid tens of millions of pounds to be officially associated with the Olympics, and Nike, which has launched an ambush marketing campaign to try and capitalise on global interest in the event.

"This deal shows why you become an Olympic sponsor, there is no way you could do a deal like this if you were just trying to piggyback on the London games," said a source. "The newspaper market has not done fantastically out of Olympic advertising but the scale of this proves that there are some big deals out there."

Stephen Daintith, finance director at Associated parent company Daily Mail & General Trust, said that he expects to make close to £10m in revenue from Olympic-related advertising across Metro, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and its portfolio of regional newspaper titles.

On Wednesday Nike launched a global TV ad campaign, supported by press and poster ads in the UK, which features everyday athletes competing in places named London around the world.

Earlier this month, BSkyB is thought to have paid about £600,000 for the privilege of being the first advertiser in the 42-year history of the Sun to have a cover wrap on the newspaper, promoting its summer of 3D sports coverage.

Adidas's ad campaign has been created by ad agency Sid Lee. The deal with Metro was struck by media planning and buying agency Carat UK.

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