And I do mean, sort of. Russian diamond giant Alrosa and state-owned/run/controlled Gazprom, the largest extractor of natural gas in the world, declining to sponsor the 2014 Winter Olympics. Now, USA Today's headline is a bit disingenuous, considering that Gazprom will be sponsoring the Russian Olympic team, just not the Olympics proper (fyi, Gazprom sponsors soccer teams in Germany, Serbia and Venezuala). Alrosa, on the other hand, pulled out of a $100 preliminary deal and will instead pursue a sponsorship deal for the 2018 World Cup.
That's all well and good but I thought the article's tone was interesting; that is the idea that the loss of this $100 million dollars due to Alrosa pulling out is no big deal because organizer Dimitri Chernyshenko has another $200 million in deals lined up, all of which will contribute to what USA Today calls "record revenue." By their count (and I've been able to verify some of this, thanks to Google), Sochi's organizing committee has already secured $1.1 billion in sponsorship deals.
Why is this interesting? Well, for me it's because it pushes the "record revenues" theme (which Russia surely loves) while omitting the part where they are spending more than $30 billion to build and stage the damn Games, which is far and away the highest figure in Olympic history. $1 billion is a drop in the bucket. But maybe that's just me being crabby.
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