Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Diamonds windfall shattered
OPINION: Remember how Big Tobacco used to sponsor the ‘‘Benson and Hedges Tennis Open’’ and the ‘‘Rothmans Rally?’’ When then Prime Minister Jenny Shipley finally closed the door on such deals, there were cries about whether sport could possibly survive being made to go cold turkey on its nicotine sponsorship addiction.
The same concerns reemerged last week after a player revolt by the Diamonds, Australia’s women’s netball team. Basically, the players refused to become human billboards for the Hancock mining company owned by billionaire Gina Rinehart. The revolt was partly for climate change reasons, and partly because of the company’s history of violating the rights and sacred sites of Australia’s indigenous peoples. In retaliation, Rinehart pulled her $15million annual sponsorship.
Netball will survive. Other sponsors will emerge, especially if the Diamonds excel at next year’s Netball World Cup in South Africa.
Similar concerns periodically arise here, over the wisdom of allowing petrochemical, gambing and alcohol industries to launder their images and promote their products to a huge and captive audience of sports fans. Because the immediate solution is a political one – asking taxpayers to pick up the tab until other sponsors can be found – the banning of tobacco sponsorship from sport remains the exception here, and not the rule.
Elite sport already receives hundreds of millions annually from Kiwi taxpayers, while ratepayers cough up most of the money required to build the stadiums in which the companies get to advertise their wares.
The All Blacks have had a long association with Steinlager, and are currently co-sponsored by the British petrochemical firm INEOS. When announcing its commercial deal with the Tui brewery, NZ Cricket crowed about the ‘‘leveraging opportunities’’ this deal presented ‘‘for two iconic brands – the Black Caps and Tui.’’
While breweries and fossil fuel industries dominate the player insignia and stadium signage in this country, grassroots sport is equally dependent on profits from the gambling industry. Do the wholesome benefits of sport outweigh the social damage that gambling wreaks in New Zealand communities ? Sure, taxpayers and ratepayers might otherwise have to pick up the slack – at least in the interim – if the more dubious funding streams were suddenly turned off.
Yet arguably, the same taxpayers and ratepayers are already picking up a sizeable tab anyway, for the significant social harms that gambling leaves in its wake.
As mentioned, the moral conflicts over the dodgy sources of sports funding have been with us for years, and they exist elsewhere. British cycling for instance, recently signed an eight year deal with Shell UK.
Obviously, the Olympics have become a temple of rampant commerce. This year, FIFA – the governing body for the world’s most popular sport – took the money and awarded the hosting rights for this year’s FIFA Men’s World Cup to Qatar, a known major human rights violator. That decision will cast a long and blood drenched shadow over this year’s tournament.
No country has found easy answers to such conflicts. In this moral vacuum though, professional sport is becoming a guilty pleasure.
Meanwhile, the Rinehart controversy has given the Diamonds a whole new set of motivations to win next year’s Netball World Cup.