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Hello and welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Roger Hearing and on this edition...
The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics are going to be the first where companies can name venues after their brands.
Also, the former boss of Mexico's state oil company is arrested in the US over a massive bribe scandal.
And last orders? Less alcohol's being consumed around the world.
So what does that mean for the companies that make and sell it?
Now, the next Summer Olympics are going to take place in 2028 in Los Angeles. we already play on the world stage.
In 2028, when we welcome the games, we'll show the world the real L.A., Well, the Los Angeles Olympics are going to be quite unique because the modern Olympics began with a commitment to avoiding commercial exploitation.
The founder, Baron de Coubertin, envisaged a competition free from commercial influence.
The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics became the first privately funded Games demonstrating the potential for financial success through corporate sponsorships. but there was some protest about the corporatisation and advertising.
Well, now, as the games return to LA in 2028...
The organisers have agreed a landmark deal with the International Olympic Committee that will allow venue naming rights to be sold. to commercial partners for the first time in the game's history.
Honda and Comcast are the first named partners.
Well, Michael Payne led the first ever marketing campaign at the LA Games in 1984 as the IOC's marketing director.
He continues to work on marketing programmes for a range of global sports across the world.
I asked him about this. I don't think it is that big a deal.
All major stadiums now around the world have naming partners.
The key thing for the IOC is that the whole field of play where the athletes are competing, that is totally free of advertising.
And this deal of the naming of the stadiums doesn't change that.
The stadiums will be free of all advertising inside.
There is something called Rule 50, I think, in the Olympic Charter, which talks about a clean venue.
I mean, if you say, right, we're going live to the Honda Stadium right now, that rather undermines that, doesn't it?
I think what matters is that the broadcast and what everybody sees visually that that has no commercial signage inside the venue.
Frankly, if you watch American network television...
The way they intercut the advertising between the commercial breaks, the commentator is saying, oh, we will now go to a commercial message from Honda.
So the naming of the venue, really, I don't think is that big a material change.
I mean, and frankly, if my memory holds correct, back in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, I think they even had the cycling stadium built by the convenience store 7-Eleven.
This division between essentially saying this is sport apart from commercialisation.
That has been being eaten away at a bit, hasn't it?
You've been doing marketing on this for a long way back, as you say, back to 1984, but Do you think that line has begun to fuzz a bit?
No. The Olympic Games is probably still the only event in the world... where there is no advertising inside the stadium.
Even Wimbledon has some signage inside the stadium.
The Olympics is unique and it's key to the Olympic brand.
So as long as that red line isn't crossed...
It's the most commercially clean sports event in the world.
But the pressure will come from companies like Comcast and Honda.
Are they going to make that much money out of being able to put their names on venues as now seems to be possible?
I think again, the finances on this, I would be astonished. if the naming of the venues generated more than 1% of the total budget of the games.
LA is running a budget of around $8 billion.
This isn't going to generate, you know, if they're lucky, $80 million.
Well, I say it's not a lot of money. I mean, I'm just wondering, is it even going to be attractive to them?
Well, you're always looking at how you manage the commercial agenda, how you create new opportunities The marketplace is changing, but naming of stadiums has become pretty much the norm around the world.
What the IOC has not conceded on And LA is not embarking on some new commercial adventure by having advertising inside the venue.
That is a red line. Is that a red line that's always going to stick, though, do you think?
Because, as you say, there is an awful lot of pressure on funding these kind of massive events we know from...
Things like the Commonwealth Games, it's a real headache now.
Is there not a point where they say, well, maybe we don't need to defend this line so hard anymore?
It's been defended successfully for nearly 50 years. and the IOC still runs the most successful sports marketing program in the world.
Many years ago, when we were building the marketing program, And money was much tighter.
I had discussions with one of the world's leading consumer companies and said, and if we were to introduce advertising in the stadium, what would it mean?
And the company said, we would cancel our contract because you would so fundamentally change what makes the Olympics special. you would just start making it look like everything else, you would destroy the value.
So I think that was understood. no matter how tight budgets were, we were not going to open up Pandora's box of having advertising inside the stadium.
Michael Payne there on the Los Angeles Olympics and the naming of stadiums.
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You're with World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
Now let's have a look at what's been going on on the markets.
I'm joined by Kerry Leahy, an economist at Columbia University.
Kerry, welcome back to the programme. And I just want to start with some rather interesting news that's come through, at least reported by Bloomberg in the last hour or two. suggesting that the trouble company Intel, that the US government might be thinking about taking a stake in them.
It's not confirmed, but it'd be an interesting development, wouldn't it?
It would be. One could go back to the 1960s when there was a lot of pressure in the Nixon administration to help out the ailing Penn Central Transportation.
So the U.S. usually gets involved for two reasons.
One, at the back end, when a company's failing like the housing agencies, Freddie and Fannie, or at the very beginning when we had DARPA, which helped to create the Internet revolution, the old joke about Gore said he created the Internet was based on the fact that it was a government agency that actually started things.
Having the government invested in technology is not a new thing, but actual ownership of an established company would be kind of new in my eyes.
And it certainly seems to have affected the share price of Intel, this suggestion.
I mean, Intel's had a pretty bad run, hasn't it?
Oh, it has, and it was a darling for so long.
It just shows you how even the companies that are the most admirable and profitable run into problems.
So – Yes, any help they could get from the government, particularly in terms of an infusion of cash from a buyback would be incredible for the stockholders.
Now, let's talk about Webtoon. I'll just explain what that is.
And it's got a deal with Disney Partnership, and their shares have gone up 81%.
First of all, Webtoon, I mean, it's a...
It's an entertainment company, isn't it?
Yes, it is, and it creates a high-end cartoon, so to speak, and that kind of stuff...
If you get the imprimatur from Disney, who's been doing that since the 1920s, it's a huge deal.
So the fact is that it's not only getting the imprimatur –
But if they move to the Disney platform, we'll give them an opportunity to generate a lot of business.
And this is a company that lost. It's stock value by two-thirds since the IPO, so it's really having a hard time even treading water.
OK, let's move on to digital currencies.
Bitcoin, I mean, we've talked about this, you and I, many, many times.
Another record high. That's right. I mean generally central banks poo-poo this kind of stuff and saying almost like crypto is a four-letter word.
But in the case of some of these – uh uh entities that are backed up by a liquid currency that the Fed can understand and use is not quite so bad.
So I think that's what you're really seeing going on there is that any currency that is gaining favor among investors and may get a backing of the central bank, at least implicitly, if not explicitly, is big, big news.
And finally, Kerry, what about – we've talked about inflation, of course, and recently this week.
A lot of talk's been about inflation in the US, and we saw that the CPI, Consumer Prices Index, actually wasn't too bad this week, but the Wholesale Price Index came out.
Now, what does that tell us? The stages of fabrication, how you take the iron, the steel, and create the car.
And that's showing some underlying input pressures, which would make sense given that we slapped on tariffs and a lot of inputs.
What we forget is that companies that produce things would be benefited from tariffs, but they also assume things that are imported tariffs.
Thank you. All right. Kerry, I think we're having trouble with your line.
We might have to leave it there. Kerry, thanks so much for being with us.
Kerry Leahy there. And apologies for the, if you weren't able to understand his final answer there, a little bit of problems with the line.
Now let's move on to Mexico, where the president, Claudia Scheinbaum, has said that the former head of the Mexican state oil company...
Pemex has been arrested in the United States.
Carlos Trevinho is accused of taking bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. in exchange for contracts with Pemex.
He served as CEO of the oil company during the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto.
In 2016, the Odebrecht firm admitted to bribing Latin American government officials and political parties in 12 nations. with hundreds of millions of dollars in order to win business.
And the scandal has brought down politicians. right across South America, Peru, Panama, Brazil itself has suffered a lot of this.
Joining me now is our Mexico correspondent, Will Grant.
Will, thanks for being with us. First of all, just what was the Odebrecht scandal for those who weren't aware of it?
To be honest, Roger, Odebrecht is the watchword for corruption, for bribery, for... political undermining, if you like, of contracts in state work across Latin America over the past... Really, it spans several decades, but certainly... the first 20 years of this century in Latin America.
It really is a watchword for bribery and corruption. particularly in the construction sector.
So I lived in Venezuela at the time. Odebrecht was involved in projects there. accusations that were later proven in court of having bright government officials.
You mentioned in Brazil the Lava Jato. um scandal might ring distant bells in the in the um the minds of listeners and and indeed of yourself that the car wash scandal as it was called in english basically that Odebrecht was moving huge amounts of money by bribing government officials with all manner of things from straight financial transfers to gifts and so on and so forth. to get these huge multi-billion contracts across the region.
So all that now seems to have reached this man who was the head of Pemex and reached Mexico.
And it's pretty. serious and it looks like he's going to be extradited from the US.
What does it tell us about what was going on in Mexico?
Well, Carlos Treviño was the last head of the state-run energy firm Pemex in Mexico under then-President Enrique Peña Nieto.
He fled to Texas in September 2021 after he failed to appear in court. over allegations of this corruption.
And he has basically been in hiding ever since. certainly fleeing these charges in Mexico.
Another former head of Pemex, Emilio Lozoya, was picked up, was brought back from Spain where he was in exile. and was basically facing multiple charges of his own. over again corruption within the state-run energy firm and relationship to Odebrecht.
He has now flipped to state's witness and accuses Mr Trevino of taking about a four million peso bribe. basically hundreds of thousands of dollars for the awarding of a multi-billion contract that Odebrecht's subsidiary took on for the building of a petrochemical complex.
Mexico very murky very messy and a stain quite literally are on the on the the state-run energy company itself and, of course, so many individuals involved in that administration at the time.
Now, Will, I mean, the Odebrecht scandal has gone on for a very long time and it's stretched right across.
It was in Peru at one point. It was in all sorts of places.
Is this coming towards the end of it? It seems to be almost endless.
The company admitted what it was doing back as far as nine or ten years ago.
It did, and I think what's interesting is that we still see these things crop up, like this extradition of Mr Trevino.
It shows that the roots of the Odebrecht scandal, you know, really, really did run deep. in Latin America.
Of course, they went beyond Latin America too.
Angola, Mozambique were other nations that were said to be involved.
What strikes me is if we're still pulling out these roots, if these things are still being found, there is more there. it'll become a point where the question is the sort of political interest in digging any further.
Is there a sense that if certain heads are fooled, and in some cases heads of states in Latin America, Is there interest in the subsequent governments to dig any further or do they feel that enough has been done so far?
A tangled web. Will, thank you so much for bringing us up to speed with that.
Will Grant there in Mexico City. Now, are we all drinking less alcohol?
Well, the evidence from Drinks Company Earnings suggests that. after the brewer announced missed half-year profit and volume forecasts.
And it's also warned consumer conditions are unlikely to improve in 2025.
Also, only 54% of Americans now say they drink what are called adult beverages, marking the lowest number in 90 years of Gallup polling.
Gallup's annual consumption habits shows those who still drink in the US are doing less of it.
40% said it had been more than a week since their last drink.
That's the highest percentage since 2000.
And those figures are matched across many countries.
So how does this feel for those who run pubs and bars?
Well, I've been speaking to Peter Schwerzmann, who's co-owner of the Hotel Anfield in Liverpool.
And first to Christina Cody, co-owner of the Landwash Brewery Taproom in Newfoundland, Canada.
It started a few years ago where we saw people being more interested in being able to enjoy maybe more than one beverage.
They wanted a couple. So we've been seeing this increase over the years.
And I would say, especially in the last two years it's been really strong demand for low and non-alcoholic options Peter, are you seeing the same thing in Liverpool?
It depends a little bit on the sector. So the bar that we have is on Anfield Road.
It's a football-led bar. although we do see an increase, maybe not as strong as some of my counterparts of the night-time economy in Liverpool city centre, who I've been speaking to.
Is it a particular group of people who are wanting this, or is it just everybody?
I would say that there is a general trend towards it, particularly from the younger generation coming through.
Speaking to my colleagues in the city, I would say that the football crowd are lagging a little bit behind.
So yes, you do see an uptake, but maybe less so.
I guess one additional factor is the fact that people simply have a little bit less money.
So it's not just a case of drinking less alcohol it's a case of drinking less and that is not just for health reasons that's also for the simple reason that some people can't afford as much as they used to as prices have gone up and people have less income.
Yeah, that's an interesting point. And, Christine, I mean, have you noticed the same thing, A, that maybe it's more the younger crowd who want the non-alcoholic and maybe just overall they also can't afford that much?
I would say it's a bit of both of a younger crowd as well as people having a little less disposable income.
We're more of a taproom rather than a pub or a bar.
We've seen an increase of younger families coming in.
And if they're two parents who are, say, under 45 and they've got young children with them, they want these lighter options as well.
And, Christina, you're producing some of these lighter or non-alcoholic options, I gather.
I mean, is it easy? Are you able to accommodate what people want by doing that?
Yeah, so we just started. In the spring, we released a non-alcoholic version of one of our sour beers.
So it's a sour ale with Newfoundland sea salt.
And it certainly is a... bit of an endeavor to make it.
We have to go through a process called pasteurization to ensure that it's shelf stable and not going to have any bacteria or yeast in it that's going to make it not food safe.
And that took a bit of effort and work, but it's been selling incredibly well.
We're hoping to be able to offer more in our lineup in the future.
And in addition to the non-alcoholic beers that we produce on our own, we've also have mocktails and other non-alcoholic options on our menus and they've always gone over really well.
So, Peter, let me come to you because, as you said, you're very much in a football environment.
That's what Hotel Anfield is, of course, about.
And in the past, maybe, one could say that a certain amount of merriment caused by alcohol is part of That culture, has that changed?
No, I would say the atmosphere at Hotel Anfield is more determined by the result. of the game.
So everybody's hopeful before and then in Liverpool's case, very merry afterwards, alcohol or no alcohol i think amongst the students or the nighttime economy we can crowd say around liverpool and there's other factors that influence the mood.
I wouldn't say that the mood has decreased just because people drink a little bit less.
It feels like a sign of the times. Well, I suppose it is one of those.
And Christina, I mean, the same sort of idea.
Is it that people, if they're drinking less, they just behave differently when they're out drinking?
Yeah, it's certainly a very different atmosphere.
It's more of a community feel rather than... a rambunctious night out.
And I feel like we're kind of seeing more of that.
We're seeing more of general just light drinking. just being part of people's everyday activities.
Yeah, and that makes it, I suppose, also maybe a little bit more civilised as well, Christina, because in the past...
Alcohol obviously associated with perhaps being not quite the easiest people to control by the staff, for example.
Yes, exactly. And we're a very family friendly place.
It's pretty common to come in here on a Saturday afternoon and see a lot of toddlers and you definitely can't have individuals who are over-intoxicated alongside a little gaggle of children.
So it would definitely be a shift in the vibe.
Now, Peter, I mean, this is a business programme.
We talk business. I suppose the bottom line is what matters in a lot of these situations.
Is it economically better? Is the bottom line better if you're selling non-alcoholic or low alcohol drinks or does it actually not make much difference?
To be absolutely truthful, alcoholic drinks are obviously more profitable than Diet Coke.
But the non-alcoholic Guinness and the normal Guinness, for example, there's very little in it. the ascendance of alcohol-free Guinness or ginless gin, as they call it, is okay for us, because in terms of the margins, it's not a monumental difference.
We are more than happy for people to choose non-alcoholic drinks, and I would go as far as saying that If you do not put them on the menu these days, even in a more football-led environment like ours, then you are going to be left behind.
Christina, same thought to you. I mean, again, as Peter was saying, I guess quite a lot of alcoholic drinks, spirits particularly, I guess, would tend to be more expensive.
In the end, do you make less money with lighter or non-alcoholic drinks?
I would say that with our specialty created mocktails and our non-alcoholic beverages that we produce in house, The price difference isn't going to be huge, but where we see a bigger increase is When you're offering a lower alcohol option, such as a light lager, you see people purchasing that in higher volumes.
So someone might buy a can of your double IPA and just have one. but they probably will have three or four of your light logger.
So where we may lose in that single consumption drink will gain in the shift of people wanting to have more of the later options.
So I'm getting the impression from both of you that this isn't necessarily an unwelcome development.
Peter, in general, it's fine as far as you're concerned.
I guess when it comes to health and the overall health benefit to society, it can only be a good thing if people drink.
But make no mistake, please, the hospitality sector in UK is under severe pressure.
So I wouldn't want to come across as if everything is hunky-dory, but I don't think that people's healthy choices are the reason why hospitality are under pressure.
It's more down to people's budgets. Peter Schrieversman there, and I was also speaking to Christina Cody.
Now, across Europe, postal services are grappling with declining letter volumes amid a rise in digitalisation.
In Denmark, where the declines have been particularly steep, its national postal service, Postnord, has decided to bring an end to 400 years of letter deliveries. and focus instead solely on parcels in 2026.
While a private firm will step into the gap, letters are a shrinking business.
So as digitalisation grows, do letters have a future?
In the Danish capital, Adrian Murray has been finding out.
Helle Knudsen is loading parcels into a van, ready for her morning postal round.
In March, she changed job after almost three decades as a postal worker.
The letter decline has been exceptionally fast, she says.
It's been hard to watch as well. We've worked hard to get those letters out and been proud of delivering them.
Inside this enormous warehouse, machines sift through piles of letters, corporate mail-outs and magazines.
Only 15 years back, there were several letter-sorting depots, but this is the last one run by National Postal Service Postmortem.
Since 2000, the volume of letters it handles has slumped by 90%. and by the year end, mail deliveries by the state-owned Postal Service will become a thing of the past.
A third of its workforce, or around 1,500 staff, are being let go.
Devad Ramak is chair of 3F Postal Union.
We said goodbye to 400 years of Danish history.
And of course, a lot of people were going to lose their jobs.
Inside a nearby parcel centre, however, the conveyors are increasingly busy with boxes.
With online shopping growing, PostNord will instead focus on this partial arm of its business.
Kim Pedersen is CEO of PostNord Denmark.
The average Danes are receiving one letter a month.
It's not a lot. On the contrary, the Danes love to shop online.
The global e-commerce are growing significantly and we are moving with it.
We are just facing this evolution, a natural evolution, I would say, of a digitized society earlier than maybe some other countries.
Here in Denmark, there's an app for almost everything. from cashless mobile payments to electronic driver's licenses.
And almost all correspondence with Danish authorities is carried out online. making it one of the world's most digitalised countries.
The result of a decades-old policy pushed by the government.
One by one, the iconic red post boxes are being removed from Danish streets.
But few here in the capital seem to use them.
Actually, my last letter I sent was like five years ago, so I really never use it.
I honestly can't remember. It's been years and years.
I'm not even sure how to do it anymore. The introduction of a new law has also opened up the postal market.
Private delivery firm Deo will absorb the demand for letter services, even as volumes shrink.
Around a quarter of a million people still rely on physical posts.
Marlene Rishoy-Cordes from the NGO Dane Age worries that the elderly will struggle to adapt to shifting services.
If you're exempted from digital mail, you are probably not very skilled digitally, then it's really difficult to figure out where to go and deliver your mail.
Across Europe and beyond, many countries have also been grappling with a heavy loss of letter volumes.
Florian Newhouse, a partner at consultancy firm McKinsey, has been looking at the data. the ones that have the least decline is still Germany, Switzerland, to some degree, it's only 40%, but everybody else is really around the 50 to 70% decline.
So I think It's a trend that we see everywhere.
Clearly, this is driven by digitalization and how people communicate in general.
While letters have not died out just yet, Denmark is inching ever closer.
And as digitalisation expands, it offers a glimpse, perhaps, of what may lie ahead for other countries.
Adrienne Murray there, reporting from Copenhagen on the end, or almost the end, really. of the postal service in terms of letters.
I have to say I scratched my head to think when I last posted a letter.
It is all online, not in all countries, but certainly in much of the world.
West. Anyway, that's it from the radio, not postal service, the BBC.
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