Longines the official sponsor of the Commonwealth Games

Omega has long been associated with Olympic games timing dating back to 1932 with the Heuer brand taking over official timing duties for a brief period from 1978 to 1980. Longines, a brand along with seventeen other watch brands including Omega forms the Swatch Group.

Longines is the official timer of the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in Queensland and was the official timer of the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games in Scotland.

Building on their French Open exposure, Longines partners the Swiss Timing consortium through collaboration with Omega, Tissot,  Blancpain, Certina and Swatch to develop and maintain timing technology.

Heuer was involved with Swiss Timing at some point but I believe no longer is associated with the consortium and Breitling was involved at some point also for the Equestrian Games but that is now dominated by Longines. 

I would suggest that the Swiss Timing consortium founded in 1972 is only involved in Swatch Group brands now. From my viewpoint, I prefer the actual brands to be represented at sporting events and I believe offers the greatest exposure to the brands.

Swiss Timing is now headquartered Corgémont, Switzerland maintaining a degree of independence to the Swatch Group. This is very much a values based judgement, this appears to be an organisation devoid of ethics.

From what I can gather, Swiss Timing was involved in a bribery scandal at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games. Indian police claim Swiss Timing supplied equipment at exorbitant rates resulting in a large financial loss to the Indian government.

So I'm guessing Swiss Timing will remain the holding company with the actual brands performing the timekeeping duties and hopefully they remain scandal free. This scandal may not have damaged individual brand credibility but it still doesn't make it right.

Let's hope that now that the brands themselves have taken over official timing duties, any hints of impropriety have now been been resolved. You purchase a brand, you don't purchase a holding company and Longines is a pretty decent brand.