Olympic authorities will use the long-awaited official logo for the 2008 Beijing Games to seek bids for coveted and costly sponsorships from next month, organising officials said yesterday.
The sponsorship quest will begin on Sunday with the unveiling of the Beijing Olympic logo, which will be used for large-scale merchandising of the games in the capital and sponsorships over the next five years.
Unofficial websites are portraying the logo as a stick-figure runner shaped like the Chinese character for 'culture' and carved into stone to represent China's history, but the shape of the winning design is a well-kept secret.
Representatives of the Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and the International Olympics Committee (IOC) will join film director Zhang Yimou in unveiling the logo during a ceremony before 2,000 people at Beijing's Temple of Heaven.
It will be broadcast live on five TV stations, including CCTV's English-language channel.
Zhang will lead the ceremony and show a movie he has made for the event.
The logo, which will be chosen from 1,994 submissions after a year of evaluations, had been due to be unveiled on May 25 but the ceremony was postponed due to the Sars outbreak.