Unofficial sponsors are banned from mentioning Games

At the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, athletes from around the world are posting tweets, photos and observations between training and competing.

Missing from their social media updates: any mention of companies that are not part of the exclusive club of official Olympic sponsors.

That’s because of Rule 40, a section of the Olympic Charter that bars such businesses from mentioning the Olympics or the athletes they sponsor in any way from July 27 to Aug. 24. Athletes are likewise not allowed to acknowledge their sponsors during that period.

The rule extends to social media, where banned words include the wholly expected (such as “Olympics,” “medal” and “Rio”) and the vague (including “performance, “challenge” and effort”). Companies aren’t even allowed to retweet news stories about the Olympics.

It’s an effort to protect official sponsors, such as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Nike, which pay handsomely for the privilege of exclusive marketing during the Olympics. Official sponsorships can reportedly cost as much as $200 million, and such deals amount to more than 40 percent of Olympic revenues, according to the International Olympic Committee.

But comparatively few Olympic athletes hold contracts with official sponsors. Many afford a lifestyle of training and competing through deals with smaller brands, which are shut out from even mentioning the athletes during the few weeks when casual sports fans might care about hurdlers or modern pentathletes.

This year, however, companies and athletes are harnessing social media to fight back.

Some Olympians have tried to highlight the silliness of barring athletes from digital free speech.

“How amazing is this!” tweeted Jade Lally, a British discus thrower, after posting a photo of a good luck card. “It’s for that thing (winking face emoji) I’m doing this summer (winking face) in South America (winking face) (hashtag)Rule40.”

Brooks Running Co., which sponsors a dozen athletes competing in the Summer Games in Rio, kicked off a stealth war against Rule 40 this summer on Instagram and Twitter.

The Seattle sportswear company also created a website, Rule40.com, that sought to educate people, along with providing slogans that can be posted to social media to mock the rule.

During the Olympic track and field trials in July, Brooks hired trucks that drove around Eugene, Ore., with similar messages.

“Good luck, you know who you are, on making it you know where,” one reads. Instead of the Olympics, the ad refers to a “generic worldwide quadrennial sporting event.”