News Toyota ends Olympic backing amid political concerns

Japanese automaker Toyota is ending its sponsorship with the Olympics, citing concerns that the Games have become "increasingly political" and don't prioritize athletes enough. This decision came after the Paris Olympics were completed. In a podcast uploaded on Thursday, Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda expressed doubts about whether the Games truly focus on athletes first. He also mentioned the growing political influence of the event. Toyota signed a 10-year sponsorship agreement with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2015. This new development marks the end of that partnership.

The withdrawal means Olympics logos currently carried by Toyota products will be phased out, and its vehicles will no longer be provided to assist with the event, the chairman said. Public broadcaster NHK said the company is also ending its Paralympics sponsorship deal. "For me, the Olympics should simply be about watching athletes from all walks of life, with all types of challenges, achieve their impossible," Toyoda told the U.S. auto dealers. Toyota follows another Japanese company, Panasonic, in ending its association with the Olympics. Panasonic announced its withdrawal earlier this month, citing "management considerations."

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Toyota is one of the largest corporate donors to the LDP and also sponsors Republicans who refused to accept the 2020 election result.


So the company is not above paying for 'political influence' when it suits them.

The company also tends to be close to the bottom in rankings of the environmental performance of automobile companies.

Well, the Olympics have been pretty political for a long time. Remember the 1936 Berlin Olympics? Or the 1980 Moscow Olympics?

I'm guessing that the problem they have is not geopolitics entering the Olympics but rather social policy dynamics entering the Olympics.

Mikawa Ossan said:

Well, the Olympics have been pretty political for a long time. Remember the 1936 Berlin Olympics? Or the 1980 Moscow Olympics?

I'm guessing that the problem they have is not geopolitics entering the Olympics but rather social policy dynamics entering the Olympics.

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Not to mention the 2020 Tokyo Olympics held in 2021.

Abe's original aim was to use the wave of patriotism stemming from a 'glorious' Olympics to push through an obnoxious new constitution that essentially made people property of the state rather than citizens.

And for a while the justification for the Olympics was to showcase Japan as a state that was successfully tackling the challenges of an ageing population (fair enough). And then it changed to a celebration of the world overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic (even though there was a long way to go before the pandemic was over). These days, the Tokyo Olympics, with its stench of corruption, tends to be something that the Japanese media prefer not to talk about.

Politicians will attach spurious aims to any major sporting event if it suits their agenda.