Lenovo no more

Lenovo announced it will end its sponsorship of the Olympics at the end of '08, four months after the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

The move makes Lenovo the second major brand departure from the Games. In October, Kodak announced it would no longer be the official film and imaging sponsor after the 2008 games.

The Financial Times reports that Acer, a global computer vendor, will be easing into Lenovo's position as global sponsor for the Olympic Games from 2009 to 2012.Acer will provide notebook, computers and monitors for the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, and the London Summer Games in '12.

12 sponsors are registered for the Beijing Olympics, but only eight have registered for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics so far.

According to The Globe and Mail, grand-scale marketing opportunities like that presented by the Olympics have been slowly losing appeal, thanks to more targeted approaches in online marketing.

It's also just plain expensive. While Acer did not reveal the cost of its sponsorship position, the other global sponsors paid an average of $78 million, with an expected price increase of over 10 percent every four years.

Advertising rates for the Olympics have climbed 20-fold since 1984.