Airbnb was one of several corporate sponsors of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Corporate sponsors of the Olympic Games play a key role in the IOC’s funding; the top 15 sponsors paid the IOC about $1 billion in cash or services in the last complete, four-year Olympic cycle, to be associated with the games.
In response to questions from Bloomberg about involvement in the 2022 Olympics, Airbnb said, “We believe China is an important part of our mission to connect people from around the world and from different backgrounds, now more than ever.”
Reading:
The International Olympic Committee’s major corporate sponsors should explain publicly how they are using their leverage to address human rights abuses in China ahead of the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games, Human Rights Watch said today. Sponsors should also press the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to adopt a human rights policy to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for any adverse human rights impacts across all Olympic operations and events, including for the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.
Corporate sponsors of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics have been accused of “squandering the opportunity” to pressure China to address its “appalling human rights record”. The Games’ top level sponsors, including Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Procter & Gamble, Intel and Visa, were on Friday accused of ignoring China’s alleged “crimes against humanity against Uyghurs” and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang as well the repression of free speech in Hong Kong.
Airbnb Inc. is being asked to drop its sponsorship connections to next year’s Beijing’s Winter Olympics by a coalition of 150 human-rights campaigners. The coalition is headed by groups that oppose rights violations in China including the detention of Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.