Maybe it’s because I have been spending an unhealthy proportion of my time watching re-runs of Mad Men, and the constant flow of client dinners and drinks is threatening to burn a hole in my stomach just from bearing witness. Or maybe it’s because the Olympics is coming to town. Whatever the reason, corporate entertaining is on Ethics Girl’s mind.

Goldman Sachs is said to have spent over £4million on tickets for the biggest Olympic events, and there are recent claims that only 36% of the 80,000 tickets for the 100m men’s final will end up in the hands of the public.

London 2012 is the first Olympics to have on-site corporate hospitality. This is something that has not escaped the attention of the media, which has made frequent enquiries into ticket sales. After asking 20 top companies – that are all known to regularly entertain clients at top sports events – about their intentions to purchase corporate hospitality packages, the BBC reported that the feeling in the market seemed to be the prices were over the odds, and the packages not flexible enough. Industry insiders said they had expected much higher levels of ticket sales than they have seen.

Whether or not businesses will eventually bow to the pressure of the need to woo their clients with gold-plated Olympic packages remains to be seen. But the sluggishness in signing up is, in and of itself, a sign that the world is changing when it comes to splashing the cash to win over customers. The coming of the economic slump caused a paring back of corporate jollies. And the advent of the Bribery Act in 2010 forced to firms to reassess whether their client entertaining wasn’t falling on the wrong side of the line. I think corporate Britain will benefit: client entertaining could do with a rethink.

Let’s go back to basics a bit – there is a place for corporate entertaining, but let’s do stuff that helps people mingle, that is about fun and sociability rather than just being showy. Drop the grand gestures: just have a fun lunch, a round of golf, or a day at the cricket. Most of all let’s remember again what the jolly is for: it’s there to help us make friends, not buy them.