Are corporate companies doing enough? I recently aired my views on the publication of reports by sport federations as a way of promoting transparency and attracting interest in the field.After talking about not releasing reports for public scrutiny, I now think it is also relevant to dwell deep on the role played by sponsors.
As they say, “curiosity kills a cat”. I am most probably the cat here and now as I still want to know what sponsors have to say about a sponsorship term that has come to an end and is not being renewed.
I might not be the only one who thinks that much as we blame football administrators about what is happening now, we also need to shift the same blame to the sponsors for not driving the debate on what has to be done.
As much as we are aware that a sponsorship is just a part of such companies'' corporate social responsibility, I am equally sure that their decision to get involved in some sort of deal with football for example, is because they have an interest in such a sport.
Now if such a company has an interest in football and wants to see it grow and thrive, then are you doing enough to promote that?
I am stating that question because of my current experience of wanting to find out from a sponsor about its views on the three years that it was involved in football and its assessment of what it got out of it and whether it was worth its money. Despite not getting anything from the institution after waiting for a response for two weeks before deciding to just kill the story, I seriously think if institutions such as sponsors also do not come out and say this was the good and the bad we got in football, then I think they are not doing justice to the federation in terms of what it should do next.
I am saying this because, as I mentioned above, that if you have an interest in football then you will as well be open enough to say “look we were glad to be part of football, but because of A, B and C we don''t think what we got was worth our investment.” By doing this, you are not only telling the administrators to wake up and maybe do things differently next time, but also telling clubs and football lovers and all the stakeholders that they need to shape up if they want to attract sponsors.
I don''t know why it is still being treated like some sort of taboo when a sponsor comes out and just says what they think about their involvement in sport. And that for me is really pathetic that one is not even willing to share such information.
It makes no sense that such information is treated as confidential, because if a father does not tell the son what he does not like then how will the son know what the father is not happy about? The same applies to a company sponsoring a sport event, because if you are not telling all the parties, which is the federation, clubs and fans who are supposed to also fill the stadiums, then I am not so sure if you are doing what I would deem as enough.
What happens now after a sponsor decides not to renew a sponsorship contract and it appears in the newspapers, we all assume that yes it''s done and dusted… but is that really the case because if you do not inform the nation on your assessment of such a term of sponsorship, then I don''t think that is the end of your involvement in the game.
The issue of attendance has been widely spoken about, but if sponsors such as Standard Bank comes into football for three years and decides not to renew their contract then aren''t the clubs supposed to think that well, it''s just MTC that speaks about the attendance at football matches and Standard Bank does not, so does that mean the attendance has improved? Definitely not, but if all sponsors that support football do not try and address these issues, the spectators and fans will assume that all is well and that sponsors are satisfied with the attendance, when in actual fact, they are not.
So if it is in your policy as a sponsor that you do not reveal what you think about your involvement in football, then do so at the beginning of entering such an agreement so that the nation also knows not to expect any sponsorship report from whatsoever company. That would sadden me because am one of those that desperately wants to see those and read about how your experience in football was.
kaino@namibiansun.com