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touchline
The journal of spor t & r isk with an international perspective
Issue 3
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Contents
Insight
Feature Articles
Contributors
Martin Kelly, Steve Boucher, Chris Hootton
Tanya Blake, Maura Manning
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A new era of social
responsibility?
How prophetic Chris Hootton’s centre
spread article in our last edition
turned out to be. In raising the
prospect of major sponsors bailing
out of some of the world’s most
prestigious sporting events in the
wake of the global economic crisis,
he probably hadn’t foreseen how
soon his words would come true.
Banks are doing it tough at the
moment and both the Royal Bank of
Scotland and Dutch financial services
group ING have announced swingeing
cuts to their sponsorship budgets for
sport. RBS has announced that it will
cut its investment in British sport by
50% including ending its sponsorship
deal with the Williams F1 team at
the end of 2010. This comes after
the UK government’s bailout of RBS
following losses of £24.1bn for 2008,
the biggest such loss in UK corporate
history. The bank will also review
its individual sponsorship deals with
tennis star Andy Murray and cricketer
Sachin Tendulkar and others.
The Williams F1 team had already
lost sponsorship deals with Baugar,
Lenovo and Petrobras. But the bad
news for Formula 1 keeps coming
following the withdrawal of the
Honda racing team last year and the
announcement by ING that they are
also withdrawing from sponsoring
the Renault team from 2010. The
ending of the ING sponsorship deal
has also raised question marks over
the future of the Renault team.
But its not only motor racing that
is being affected. David Thorpe,
chairman of the Racecourse
Association, has predicted that
sponsorship revenue in horse racing
could fall by as much as 40% during
the economic recession. The annual
report of the British Horseracing
Authority show that sponsors’
contribution to prize-money has
already dropped more than £3m in
four years. Now, in light of the current
economic climate and the withdrawal
of sponsor Vodaphone, Epsom Downs
Racecourse has taken the decision
to divide up the 2009 Derby Festival
sponsorship offering the individual
races on Ladies Day and Derby Day.
There are many other examples
of major sponsors reducing or
withdrawing sponsorship from major
events or clubs. Perhaps this is giving
rise to a new realism in sport about
what it is all about - a sense of getting
back to basics. For example, some
football clubs have demonstrated
their social awareness by giving the
club’s shirt sponsorship to a charitable
cause. Barcelona donated their shirt
sponsorship to Unicef and Aston Villa
donated their sponsorship to Acorn
Children’s Hospice.
Now Sheffield Wednesday have
given their shirt sponsorship to The
Children’s Hospital in the City of
Sheffield for the next two years. Club
chairman Lee Strafford explained that
the move was to express a sense
of social responsibility in football,
rather than focus on financial issues
A commercial sponsorship would
generate more finances, but the club
is interested in making the point that
football is not just about money.
Let’s hope that more sports and events
follow suit and that the financial crisis
can give rise to a renewed focus on
sport for its own sake rather than as a
commodity to sell.
Best wishes,
March 2009
Steve Boucher
touchline@sportscover.com
