Economics Olympiad:Branded Sports Bottles for a National Student Final
Hotline Promotional Products supplied 250 branded sports bottles for the Economics Olympiad UK National Final, held at...
Hotline Promotional Products supplied 250 branded sports bottles for the Economics Olympiad UK National Final, held at SOAS, University of London on 22 June 2026.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Client | Economics Olympiad UK, an international academic competition for school-age economists |
| Sector | Education, schools and academic competitions |
| Product | Branded Thirst Grip sports bottles, 500ml with a valve cap |
| Quantity | 250 |
| How it was funded | Hotline sponsorship |
| Event | Economics Olympiad UK National Final, SOAS, University of London, 22 June 2026. Around 150 finalists |
| Distribution | One bottle per student and per accompanying teacher, handed out in the welcome pack on arrival alongside the commemorative programme |
| Result | Refilled at campus water stations through a full day of assessments on one of the hottest days of the year, then taken home |
What the Economics Olympiad is
The Economics Olympiad is an international academic competition that asks students to apply economic thinking to real-world problems, analyse live issues and defend their reasoning under time pressure. The UK National Final brings the highest-scoring students in the country together for a full day of assessments and presentations.
Helen Coupland-Smith, National Organiser, explained where it came from:
We wanted to join a competition that celebrates economic thinking in the same way that Maths and Science Olympiads celebrate their subjects.
The 2026 final was judged alongside talks from Professor Linda Yueh, Dr Yannis Dafermos, Soumaya Keynes and Professor Ha-Joon Chang. Ananyaa Gupta was crowned the UK's first National Champion, and the five highest-scoring students went on to represent the UK at the International Economics Olympiad in Ancient Olympia, Greece.
Why sports bottles for a full day of exams
The brief was not really about merchandise. More than 150 teenagers were sitting demanding assessments and giving presentations across a full day, on 22 June, which turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year. A bottle was the product that solved the actual problem in the room. It is also one of the few giveaways that gets used continuously during an event rather than put in a bag, which is what you want when the item is meant to help rather than just to be seen. The wider point for anyone buying for a long event: work out what the day is physically like before you choose a product. A full day indoors in June has a different answer from a stand at an autumn exhibition, and the product that fits the day will always outperform the product that fits the brand guidelines.
Why 250 bottles for 150 students
There were around 150 finalists and 250 bottles, and the gap is the useful part. Every accompanying teacher got one too. Counting only the headline attendee figure is one of the most common ways an event merchandise order comes up short, because the number quoted in the brief is almost always the number of participants, not the number of people in the building. Teachers, staff, speakers, volunteers, judges and the organising team all turn up, all see everyone else holding something, and all reasonably expect one. If you are ordering for an event, count the adults as well as the attendees, then add a buffer for the ones nobody told you about. Running out in front of the people who organised the day is a bad way to end it.
The thing that decides whether a bottle giveaway works
A reusable bottle is only reusable if there is somewhere to fill it. SOAS has water refill stations across the campus, so students topped up through the day rather than being handed disposable bottles at every break. That single detail is what turned 250 branded bottles from a nice keepsake into the thing that ran the day's hydration. It also cuts the other way, and it is worth saying plainly: at a venue with no refill points, a branded bottle is a souvenir people carry around empty. Check the venue before you order bottles. If there is nowhere to fill them, the honest answer is that a different product will serve your guests better, and we would rather tell you that than sell you 250 bottles. For anyone trying to run an event without single-use plastic, this is the mechanism that actually does it. The material the giveaway is made from matters less than whether the venue lets people use it more than once.
What the bottle did after the day
The bottle went in the welcome pack alongside the official commemorative programme, handed over as students arrived. That is a deliberate choice: a welcome pack sets the tone of an event in the first minute, and an object with some weight to it reads differently from a lanyard and a folder. Afterwards it goes home. A bottle from the day you were one of 150 students picked from the whole country is a keepsake with a reason to exist, which is a considerably better prospect than a branded pen from a careers fair.
Who else backed the event
Worth being straight about this, because Hotline was one of three. The 2026 National Final was sponsored by Time2Resources Ltd. SOAS, University of London provided the venue, the facilities and the support that made the day possible. Hotline supplied the branded bottles that went into every welcome pack.
Support from organisations such as Hotline is invaluable in helping initiatives like the Economics Olympiad continue to grow.
Our guide to how to choose promotional products for an event covers matching a product to the day, and how to buy eco-friendly merchandise without the greenwashing covers what to ask about materials. If you are working to a fixed event date, the guaranteed delivery date on every product page is the date we deliver on or before. To see what is available, browse our sports bottles and drinkware, our conference and delegate merchandise or our event giveaways.