USA Swimming is pleased to announce the continuation of its longtime partnership with BMW as official automotive sponsor through 2020. BMW will continue to assist in the development of technology to improve athlete performance in the pool, the progress of which will be featured in a digital content series.
Since 2010, BMW has teamed up with USA Swimming to leverage its technological and engineering expertise to improve the performance of elite athletes leading up to the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games. Specifically, the partnership will draw upon BMW’s product design and development capabilities and proprietary SwimTech technology that will track swimmers during training and provide qualitative feedback in real-time to improve mechanics and increase the efficiency of strokes.
“Our involvement with USA Swimming and with the Olympic movement in general has always been about the athletes, first and foremost,” said Trudy Hardy, Vice President of Marketing, BMW of North America. “I’m proud to say that our collaborations with U.S. Paralympic Track & Field and USA Bobsled & Skeleton have resulted in a combined ten Olympic and Paralympic medals. It is our hope that we can continue this run of success and help the athletes of USA Swimming reach their goals.”
The SwimTech technology will be featured in a digital content series produced by USA Swimming Productions and digitally distributed through joint online and social channels. The content series will focus on data analytics, improving technique and technology that will boost swimming performance.
“Teaming up with BMW gives us the opportunity to provide learning tools for all levels of our membership through BMW’s technique focused digital content series,” said Matt Farrell, Chief Marketing Officer for USA Swimming. “Through two Olympic Games BMW has helped the U.S. succeed in the pool, and we’re excited to extend this to the grassroots level and ensure the swimming success of future generations.”
As part of the partnership, BMW will have the rights to use USA Swimming marks and activate at select events through 2020. The company will also provide a one-year lease on a new vehicle as the grand prize to the male and female point winners of USA Swimming’s annual arena Pro Swim Series.
In celebration of the partnership, BMW will offer a purchase incentive to all USA Swimming’s 400,000 members on BMW and MINI vehicles. Members will have access effective immediately through their Deck Pass account and the Deck Pass Perks program. Log into Deck Pass through usaswimming.org.
BMW will also have rights to do an event activation at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Swimming. At the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Swimming, BMW took initiative as the AquaZone rewards title sponsor. The rewards program received 23,136 participants and presented one raffle winner a one-year BMW X1 lease.
Other partnership elements include assets such as promotional support for BMW test drive events, advertisements in Splash Magazine (a 275,000 circulation quarterly publication sent direct to USA Swimming members), entitlement of a digital content series, the right to use USA Swimming marks, event activation at USA Swimming sanctioned meets and signage and a VIP table for the annual Golden Goggle Awards.
