Rugby deal not so good for Guinness
NEWS that rugby fans will not be able to enjoy the traditional pint of Guinness during halftime at all 13 World Cup stadiums has left a somewhat nasty taste in the mouth.
Thanks to a £20m marketing deal with Dutch brewer Heineken, not a drop of the black stuff will be on sale anywhere at Twickenham or other World Cup venues for the duration of the tournament.
Heineken’s own brands will be the only things on the drinks’ menu, with typical prices at the home of England Rugby a wallet-bashing £5 per pint – and that’s before the additional £1 is charged for each plastic pint pot. This can be recouped when the vessel is returned at closing time.
According to Guinness-maker Diageo, half of all the pints sold at Twickenham for England international matches is a Guinness, with an average of 82,000 pints sold during a game.
Incredibly this leapt to 100,447 on November 8, 2014, when England played world champion New Zealand All Blacks, losing 24-21.
Daily Mail readers have already expressed their anger following our original report in Friday’s newspaper, with one commenting on MailOnline that they didn’t appreciate the way corporate sponsorship was dictating what consumers are allowed to buy.
Other readers revealed prices inside the grounds were now so high they were resorting to drinking outside before kick- off and abstaining during the match – something sponsors will not want to hear. If more people did this, prices would surely fall inside.
Of course, exclusive rights deals for key sponsors are nothing new.
Bosses at the 2012 Olympics banned hundreds of food outlets from selling chips – unless they were served with fish – because of a demand from sponsor McDonald’s. Interestingly, Heineken was one of the key sponsors of the Games too, and also uses product placement in James Bond movies, causing controversy when Daniel Craig asked for a cold beer instead of 007’s usual martini, shaken not stirred. Much l i ke MI6’ s most famous fictional agent, by its very nature r ugby attracts types that don’t take kindly to being pushed around. They’re already being bombarded with ever more logos and brands, the appearance of which have spread inexorably from inside stadiums to surrounding areas.
Of course, this means money for the sport, and the 2015 Rugby World Cup will be the richest yet.
The silver lining in this latest corporate horror show is that those lucky enough to be travelling to watch the rugby over the next few weeks should easily be able to find a local hostelry serving their favourite tipples. We can all raise a glass to that!
Unmanned innovation
ONE of the key themes to emerge from this week’s major DSEI defence and security trade show at London’s ExCel centre was the future role of unmanned aerial vehicles – or drones to you and me.
The recent announcement than British citizens with Islamic State had been killed by missiles fired by a drone in Syria propelled the debate around the use of such military technology to the top of the political agenda.
Closer to home, a man has been fined for repeatedly flying his toy drone over various sporting stadiums, despite being warned to stop by police.
It was inevitable that with the rapid proliferation of drones the technology to counter them is fast-emerging as well.
Analysts at defence and security intelligence outfit Jane’s describe counter-UAVs as a hot topic at present. At DSEI aerospace giant Airbus and defence electronics group Selex were among those to showcase their solutions.
Selex warned that smaller drones are ‘easy to make, cheap to buy, simple to fly and hard to detect’ making them ‘one of the most quickly evolving technological threats’ to both the military and civilians, including commercial passenger jets.
While military forces use sophisticated drones to seek out and kill those identified as Islamic militants, other unmanned vehicles could easily be used by terrorists for reconnaissance or to deliver explosives in the wrong hands.
How, then, to guard against this? Various US agencies have been working on this problem for some time. Swarming a hostile UAV with others to stop it in its tracks or jamming its signals with radio waves are now all possible, or even taking over control to land them in safe area. Lasers are even being put to use disabling or destroy rogue drones.
In the jargon of the arms-makers, there is an urgent operational requirement for an affordable and effective anti-drone system.
Innovative British companies should be well placed to benefit from this demand.