The ugly face of sports commercialism

Dear sports marketing gurus

Ihave a mate who emigrated to the UK in the late 1990s. He was back in town last week to visit family and decided he would like to take in a Super Rugby match while he was here.

Being a big Lions fan, he was delighted his visit coincided with the derby against the Bulls.

He even brought an old Lions rugby jersey with him and told me he was going to wear it to the game to illustrate his allegiance to the home side. Last Saturday at about noon he called me and he was frantic.

“Guy,” he wailed, “where the hell is this Emirates Airline Park? When I left here the Lions used to play at Ellis Park. I didn’t even know they had moved to a new home ground!”

He was both relieved and horrified when I explained to him that Emirates Airline Park and Ellis Park were one and the same.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. So they sold their soul and changed the name of an iconic stadium, the one where the Boks scored one of the most memorable wins in rugby history (the 1995 Rugby World Cup final)?”

What really upset him was the fact that he was at Ellis Park for that brilliant win over the All

Guy Hawthorne

Blacks in 1995 and he confessed it was something he would forever remember. The name change, he said, somewhat tarnished that memory.

That got me thinking about these ridiculous sponsorship deals where naming rights are part of the package and it reminded me of a report I read about the pre-season SuperHero Sunday (already a stupid name for a rugby double-header) at Newlands.

I remember wanting to catch up on the scores because I had missed the matches and I logged on to a website to get an update.

The article began by describing the large, enthusiastic crowd for the first match between the Emirates Spider-man Lions and the Cell C Black Panther Sharks and the later game between the DHL Thor Stormers and the Vodacom Captain America Bulls at DHL Newlands. I kid you not! I am sure I threw up a little in my mouth and I immediately stopped reading and instead searched for a website which would give me what I was looking for ... straightforward match reports.

I fully understand that, in this commercialised age, sponsors want as much bang for their buck as possible. But surely a line has to be drawn.

When established brands and, indeed, venues are bastardised to appease sponsors, my feeling is that the line has been crossed. Put all the branding you want around the stadium, plaster your logos all over the jerseys of the side you sponsor, but for goodness sake leave the team/venue names out of it.

There are some things in sport that should remain untouched.