Summer may just be heating up, but advertisers should already be thinking about and planning for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games because the “Rule 40” deadline is fast approaching. The opening ceremony of the PyeongChang Olympics isn’t until February 9th of next year, but advertisers that are not official Team USA sponsors but want to include Team USA members in campaigns that run during the PyeongChang Olympics must act by August 1, 2017.

As we discussed in our previous blog post titled Golden Rules: Diving Into Rule 40, Rule 40 restricts participants in the Olympic Games from allowing their “person, name, picture or sports performances to be used for advertising during the Olympic Games.” This restriction, which is contained in a bye-law to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Charter, is administered by each country’s Olympic authority and was relaxed somewhat in 2015 to permit Olympic participants to be featured in so-called “generic” advertising during the Olympic Games.