When the French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH agreed to pay about $175 million to underwrite the organizing committee for the Paris Olympics, the company, owned by France’s richest person, Bernard Arnault, asked for more than any previous sponsor had ever done. Organizers of the Games, desperate for that cash, appeared to have said yes at every turn.

The medals? Made by the LVMH-owned jeweler Chaumet. The French parade uniforms? Made by the LVMH-owned label Berluti. The medal trays for every event? The unmistakable checkerboard pattern of Louis Vuitton. And on and on it went. But there was one secret that had been held back, Antoine Arnault, who is Bernard Arnault’s son and the family’s representative to the Olympics, told a gathering of well-heeled Parisians on the eve of the Games.

Keep an eye out, he and other LVMH executives said, for “a big surprise” involving the company.

In the end it was hard to miss. Among the parade of athletes cruising along the River Seine was one vessel carrying different cargo: suitcases and trunks encased in Louis Vuitton leather. The Louis V was just one part of the show, an hourslong broadcast that also featured a long video segment beamed to millions of people worldwide that showed the making of the trunk and then panned to dancers in LVMH-designed clothing.

The audacious segment — effectively a three-minute advertisement for LVMH during one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the Games — left some longtime Olympic executives slack-jawed. But it also outraged several of the International Olympic Committee’s top partners, billion-dollar companies that have been involved with the Games for far longer than LVMH.

“I was very surprised to see the level of LVMH branding in the ceremony,” said Ricardo Fort, a former executive responsible for events like the Olympics and the soccer World Cup at Coca-Cola, whose Olympic partnership dates to the Amsterdam Games in 1928. “This is so unusual I can’t even think about another opening ceremony where a brand had such a visible role.”

The New York Times