It's a great question.
In today's world, companies have a stronger accountability requirement, if you will, to the board of directors, so they're scrutinizing dollars that they spend, investments that they make. They need to understand the return on investments.
Our approach with our partners was always about how can you help us and how can we help you? It wasn't a one-way communication. Historically, if you look back into sponsorships in Canada, it was many times a one-way relationship. It's got to be a two-way relationship.
Now let me go to the torch relay on the specifics of your question. All our sponsors were engaged, and you had to be a current game sponsor to be a torch-relay sponsor.
As you know, we had to fund the entire torch relay by sponsorship, which had a budget of about $40 million. That's a lot of incremental money, if you will, for sponsors who had already invested in the games to add. We had the opportunity, as stipulated by the IOC, to have two presenting partners. That was what we were able to do, so the lion's share of the funding had to come from them.
Our strategy, which I think is relevant to what's going on in terms of where you're headed with the 150th anniversary, was that we brought in a couple of companies that we thought would make the investment in the early days to help us sculpt what this thing would look like. Why? Because if our vision and their vision and values were like-minded we knew that incremental investment would be that much greater. When we did that, they helped sculpt the programs. We understood what their needs were, they understood what our needs were—and I'll be clear that they needed something—but we didn't want to be an over-commercialized torch relay. They understood that was part of the game plan.
By bringing partners into the strategy and the sculpting of some of your programming features, this allows you.... When you go to them to say we need $10 million more, there's not a thought; they're there, and they're committed. It was a strategy that worked for us, both in the torch relay as well as the Cultural Olympiad, because that too was funded, again, separately by games partners. So it was very strategic.
When we talk about timelines and the need to be well ahead in your planning to get corporate sponsors, they don't want to come on at the eleventh hour. The longer they have time to be part of what's going on, the more value and therefore the higher the return on the investment there is.