On arrival at the gleaming new Terminal 3 of Beijing airport, you may be greeted by China's most famous sportsmen: Mr Yao, the basketball player, and Liu Xiang, who won gold in the no-metre hurdles in Athens. They are not there in person, of course, but beam from advertisements for Visa, "the only card accepted at the Beijing 2008 Olympic games".rnThe credit-card company is one of the Olympics' 12 leading sponsors, which between them have paid $866m for a four-year association covering the Turin winter games in 2006 as well as the games in Beijing due to start next week. That is about $2oom more than the previous set of deals, for Salt Lake City and Athens, which involved 11 companies. Few events enable companies to reach so many people around the world-even though sponsors are not allowed to put their names on advertisements at Olympic venues.
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