A close eye on sponsor power is much needed
The editor of Cricket Statistician analyses recent events
There was a chilling remark in last week’s The Cricket Paper. Tim Wright, described as a former head of sports management firm IMG in India, said of Ben Stokes: “I think it’s going to be difficult for him to get individual levels of endorsement. What will be interesting is whether the bigger brands that support England then exert any pressure over his involvement in the team.”
England’s current main sponsor is NatWest (a matter of such importance that I had to look it up), and I believe there was a decision taken some years ago to avoid brewers and other manufacturers of alcoholic beverages. Presumably the ECB felt they did not want the England team associated with alcohol, though this is an impossibility for almost any sport. Local cricket clubs, of course, have relied heavily on brewers as sponsors as they will sell their products in club bars, and those bars may have been paid for by grants or cheap loans from brewers.
But a sponsor intervening in team selection? Well, if you sell your soul to the Devil and haven’t read the small print, don’t be surprised if he wants something more. But what exactly do sponsors want?
Presumably it’s something which chimes with the image they want to project, but historically, rather than nudge, they seem just to have crept quietly away at the end of the contract as Gillette did when they realised that after a few years nobody associated the Gillette Cup with the company any more. They do like to stick their names onto grounds and stadia, but they come and go (Foster’s Oval, Kia Oval…)
As far as I know, they don’t actually intervene in team selection. Sponsors do of course drop individuals, and you can see that Greene King would not be too keen on someone seen as abusing related products, though an alternative approach might be If he’d only stuck to Abbott Ale…but I am not aware of any such pressures.
Manchester United didn’t lose sponsors over Eric Cantona’s problem, nor – as far as one can see – was there any pressure from sponsors for them to get rid of him. One assumes sponsors were not involved in getting shot of KP, and it wasn’t Waitrose suggesting he looked too much like an Asda shopper.
There have of course been times when sports have shied away from particular sponsors. There was a time when everything in cricket seemed to be sponsored by tobacco manufacturers. At the present time Premier League football is largely sponsored by betting companies, which for obvious reasons (one would suppose) would not be welcomed in cricket. I suspect this is a trend which will reverse shortly as betting companies are increasingly seen as a social problem, like tobacco and brewers before them.
But this could be something that needs watching.