“It is incredible how interested almost 1.3 billion Chinese are in Beijing 2008,” said Gerhard Heiberg, the IOC's marketing chief.

　　The Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympics （BOCOG） has signed up 10 domestic partners. Seven of them are Chinese companies, with Volkswagen, Adidas and Johnson & Johnson rounding out the roster.

　　Yuan Bin, director of BOCOG's marketing department, revealed that some of the organizing committee's domestic sponsors pay even higher fees than the IOC's global sponsors, or TOP sponsors.

　　The threshold for becoming a TOP sponsor has been rising over the years. The package for the Sydney Games in 2000 was around 40 million dollars for a four-year sponsorship. Now the rights for the Beijing Games are set at about 65 million dollars.

　　Add at least 260 million US dollars that BOCOG will pocket from the IOC's 11 TOP sponsors, including China's own Lenovo, Heiberg expects Beijing 2008 to be the most profitable Olympics, beating the 224-million-US-dollar surplus in 1984.