QMS extends Olympic deal, predicts OOH is heading to 20% share
Out-of-home company QMS has extended its partnership with the Australian Olympic Committee and Paralympics Australia ahead of the 2026 Winter games.
As the official outdoor partner of the teams, QMS will provide OOH packages to brands across Australia for the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics and Paralympics. The extension follows a successful partnership for last year’s Paris Olympics and Paralympics.
It has not yet revealed what the commercial packages will consist of. Last year, QMS offered three package tiers ranging from $1 million to $1.7 million. The priciest ‘gold’ tier included eight weeks of activities, for which it promised up to 45 million impressions per week. That promise increased to 85 million for during the games.
Announcing the partnership at a media-only event at the Sydney Opera House, QMS introduced a revamped sales pitch around “8 dimensions of digital out-of-home”.
QMS CEO John O’Neill said he believed the out-of-home industry could reach a 20% of all Australian advertising spend by 2030.
“We are mid 15s (% share), can we get to 20% of the industry? We like to think so. I think with the investment everyone’s put in, if everyone’s on board, there’s no reason why we can’t get there.”
“This is a wonderful medium that has moved from 3% [share] when I started,” he said. “When I was whacking around trying to sell tin signs and put some posters up, we couldn’t even get people to put them up in time … so it’s just a very different world than what it was. And a really exciting one.”
QMS CEO John O’Neill, execs and trade media in Sydney
According to metrics from the Outdoor Media Association’s (OMA) Move 1.5, QMS delivered an audience reach of 11.5 million Australians, with 81,478 pieces of real-time breaking news content across both games.
Further research conducted by Kantar found that the network “significantly boosted” brand funnel metrics for QMS’ partners. Studies by Neuro-Insight also found Paris partner campaign activity achieved a 22% greater long-term memory encoding response, when compared to non-partner campaigns.
The Olympic games will kick off on February 6, 2026, featuring more than 3,500 athletes from 93 countries. The Paralympics will follow on March 6, 2026, with 600 athletes. Australia will send nearly 70 athletes total, across the two games.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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topics
Australian Olympic Committee
Milano Cortina Winter Olympics
Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics
oOh
out of home
Paralympics Australia
QMS
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