London Olympics electrifies GE

General Electric Co (GE) sold about $100 million of lights, power supplies and medical devices for the London Olympic Games, less than for Beijing’s massive build-out but still enough to justify the largest US conglomerate’s sponsorship, officials said on Monday.

General Electric Co (GE) sold about $100 million of lights, power supplies and medical devices for the London Olympic Games, less than for Beijing’s massive build-out but still enough to justify the largest US conglomerate’s sponsorship, officials said on Monday.

Since signing on as a top-level Olympic sponsor in 2005, GE has generated about $1 billion in revenue from selling equipment for the stadiums and athlete villages in Torino, Beijing and Vancou-ver — with about half coming from China’s 2008 games.

“At the time when Beijing went for the Olympics, they invested a lot. There was just a lot more to be built and developed,” said Beth Comstock, GE’s chief marketing officer. “London has a much more measured appro-ach in terms of infrastructure, but we certainly are happy that we participated.”

The backers of the London games spent about $14 billion in building new Olympic venues and overhauling existing sites, less than the estimated $40 billion that China spent.

The Fairfield, Connecticut-based company declined to say how much it paid for its Olympic sponsorship — Olympic contracts prohibit sponsors from disclosing the amount — but said the revenue from Olympic projects has justified its sponsorship.

GE's sponsorship contract runs through 2020. While the world’s largest maker of electric turbines and jet engines no longer owns a majority stake in US Olympic broadcaster NBC Universal it still finds that the sponsorship has paid off, Comstock said.