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Sydney 2000 has proved a phenomenal success for its 24 main backers, which forked out for the right to associate their brands with the 27th Summer Olympiad Games.

The 24 Team Millennium Olympic Partners, including Coca-Cola, IBM and McDonald's, spent between pounds 15m and pounds 33m each on local and global marketing programmes for the Games.

They benefited from record ticket sales, consumer polls showing unprecedented approval rates for Olympic sponsorship and rocketing broadcast ratings - outside the US, at least.

In the US, broadcaster NBC's decision to delay its Sydney coverage was the main trigger of declining audiences and advertisers' wrath.

The organisers also successfully cracked down on the ambush marketing that blighted the 1996 Olympics, in Atlanta.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) marketing director Michael Payne said: 'There has been the odd exception, but the Games have been the most ambush-free since this first became an issue.'

To protect partner exclusivity, the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games prior to the Games pushed through legislation in conjunction with the IOC, Australian Olympic Committee and New South Wales government, to ban unauthorised commercial activity.

Efforts were also made to learn from the mistakes of Atlanta, where commercial activity in the city was criticised. One of the worst protagonists in 1996 was Coca-Cola with its attempts to rebrand the whole of its headquarters - Atlanta. Coke's strategy in Sydney has been more low key, although it pulled its weight by prohibiting spectators from drinking Pepsi.

Others, with smaller budgets, could not afford to be so subtle in approach.

The director of one Australian financial services firm dressed up as a kangaroo and paraded round the perimeter of the world's most famous opera house to earn his brand some kudos.

Meanwhile, the investment by Nike and Qantas in backing 400m women's gold medallist Australian Aborigine Cathy Freeman should prove money well spent. Freeman's win was hailed across the country as the most important act of political and cultural reconciliation in its history.

Likewise, the Team UK sponsors, including Adidas, Lloyds TSB and BA, will have no regrets following Great Britain's haul of 11 gold medals, alongside ten silvers and seven bronzes.

The Games also saw renewed calls from sponsors to allow the showcasing of their brands within Olympic venues.

It is a delicate issue for the IOC, which is striving to find a balance between making Olympic backers feel they have adequate representation and preserving one of the Games' essential virtues.

Payne said: 'The Olympics is unique in prohibiting advertising at venues, and there is no way we will simply surrender that unique heritage.'

Virtually all the top-tier slots for the next generation of Olympic marketing, covering the Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002 and the Athens Games in 2004, have already been filled.

In the build-up to those events, there will likely be more work along the lines of 'Celebrate Humanity', the IOC's first ever brand awareness campaign, by TBWA Chiat Day, which ran prior to this Games.