Should athletes have a say in corporate sponsorship?

[stui magpie]

Suddenly we've had athletes having issues with corporate sponsors who sponsor their sport.

I have no problem with athletes being picky about their own personal sponsors, but when you're talking about the club or competition, how much say should they have?

Hancock mining has withdrawn it's $15m sponsorship of Netball Australia after player(s) raised concerns about it's record on Indigenous issues.

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/netball/hancock-prospecting-pulls-15m-netball-sponsorship-20221020-p5bri5.html

Netball isn't exactly in a great position financially, $7m in debt the past 2 years, no real broadcasting rights revenue, but players expect to be paid as professional athletes.

This follows on from the Australian Cricketers, lead by the Captain Cummins, pushing back on the deal with Alinta Energy as a sponsor over their parent companies green credentials. That's fine for Cummins, he earns a shitpile and the sponsorship deal won't impact him, but it doesn't sit well with me personally.

Companies sponsor sporting teams as a marketing exercise. Usually it's about trying to ally their product or brand with a successful, healthy passtime.

Look at the companies that pay the most money for sponsorships.
Fast food companies, Insurance, online betting, and back in the day it was alcohol and cigarettes. None of these were exactly virtuous organisations or industries devoted to making the world a better place.

I get individuals having religious objections to some things, but there comes a point where financial reward can bang headlong into personal beliefs.

In my view, if you want to be well paid as a professional athlete, don't bite the hand that feeds you and butt out of team or sporting organisation level sponsorships. If you object to a sponsor, get it in your contract that you don't have to do personal advertising for them.

Bit of a rambling OP but Thoughts?

[What'sinaname]

Athletes thinking they are bigger than the game.

I'd be happy to see Netball Australia collapse just to prove the point that athletes need to sometimes learn to STFU.

Agree with comments on social media. Donate it to someone who appreciates it, like the Perth Children's Hospital.

[David]

I reckon it’s a totally legitimate action to take. It’s a statement of principle to say that you don’t want a team you play for to be associated with a company you’re morally opposed to. I’m happy to see cigarettes and pokies phased out of sport, and the sooner that happens to the big mining conglomerates that are doing harm to the planet, the better.

We can say it’s not their business and that players should just shut up and do what they’re paid to do, but no players means no team, and these netballers and cricketers have correctly perceived the leverage they wield. So I say good on them for standing up for their beliefs. Some things are more important than money.

[What'sinaname]

^ that is exactly the response I would expect from a millennial.

Big mining bad.......forgetting that renewable energy relies on big mining for steel, lithium, aggregate, cement.

[stui magpie]

^

Yep. @David, you do realise that "renewable" energy chews up far more mining resources? Solar panels and Electric Vehicles are very mining resource hungry.

What's the old saying? You can't have your cake and eat it too?

[What'sinaname]

1. Hard times create strong men.
2. Strong men create good times.
3. Good times create weak men.
4. And, weak men create hard times

We are in phase 4 right now.

[pietillidie]

^Yes, and Australia entered it after Keating, leaving David's generation and those afterwards to deal with a mess the appallingly irresponsible and selfish generation now in their 60s+ created for everyone else as they stole the future and now choke it to death with their massive voting block.

It goes back to when the sociopathically selfish self-servers failed every single marshmallow test put before them, unlike their parents, and has absolutely nothing to do with David's generation.

The whacko grabbers before David flatly refused to invest in the future, gobbling up national and natural assets for themselves in a destructive swine fest; trashing government revenues; taking easy money from mining in exchange for policy and planning wreckage; refusing to solve massive looming issues such as urban sprawl, infrastructure investment, knowledge economy skills investment and climate change; supporting economy-destroying wars like Iraq; taking China's money without conditions then trashing the relationship; taking Howard's handouts and easy mining money with no pricing of externalities and reinvestment; refusing to invest in skills, education and the knowledge economy; failing to rein in banks and finance before the GFC while riding the boom; trashing very basic responsibility by failing to roll out serious broadband and funding green energy and technology; scoffing at global warming; letting species collapse with abandon while poisoning land and sea; failing like callous dumb arses to even consider the need for a serious pandemic response system as the world rapidly globalised; and as part of that self-centredness, coc% blocked the ability for the country to provide the very basic and absolutely crucial psychological incentive of housing affordability for those after them.

So, you've got the right sort of thinking, just the entirely wrong generations and the completely wrong cause; i.e., it's got nothing to do with softness, but rather a deranged short-termist selfishness that trashed the future. Malignancy isn't tough; it's simply malignant.

[Bucks5]

In a squad of 40 players there are bound to be a few that will find something to dislike about a sponsor. Imagine being a CEO and negotiating a great sponsorship deal only to have some players crack the sads.

It would make our current sponsorships of KFC and Emirates unlikely.

[What'sinaname]

Funny how Cummins is happy to play in the IPL and earn a f&^ktonne of money ($8m and counting) when India is the third largest CO2 emitters.

[David]

[think positive]

[stui magpie]

Nice little rant, I'm sure there was a point in there somewhere.

The climate change agenda just can't co-exist with the anti mining agenda, it just doesn't work. Renewable energy sources require more mines. An electric car needs 2.5 times more copper than a normal car, that means more copper mines, not to touch all the rare earths that go in to make batteries that have a 10 year lifespan.

As I said before, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

[think positive]

[David]

[eddiesmith]

If sports are limited to sponsors that suit the woke brigade then there’ll be **** all money available so hopefully all these enlightened players are willing to take massive pay cuts or see their sport die just to feel good about themselves.