04/26/24
February 12, 2006
Sponsorships cause conflicts between athlete and national team: Athletes need the money, but so do their teams. See what kinds of conflicts occur.
posted by worldcup2002 to other at 11:44 AM - 3 comments
The article gives a bit of a warped view of things, since most sports and athletes don't have the choices that were presented. Here's a more realistic scenario. Let's say the team gets free clothing provided by Adidas, and the athlete gets offered some free clothing from Nike. Maybe even $5K thrown in from Nike -- not enough to allow the athlete to go "independent" from the team, but enough to make life easier. Then the team has to be the bad guy and tell the athlete he can't take the Nike sponsorship. That's when the real bad feelings arise.
posted by Amateur at 09:59 AM on February 13, 2006
Simple Solution: Reinstate amaturism, dump all logos on athletes competition garb (excluding a 1/4" square for manufacturer logo) Corporates want to sponsor they can get "official sponsor of...." mention in all of their ads for sponsorship of the NRB. Individual athletes can cut sponsorship deals all they want, for advertising appearances, non-competition appearances, etc.
posted by elovrich at 07:50 PM on February 13, 2006
Nice problems to have. Even 25 years ago world class athletes were travelling around trying to compete on a diet of peanut butter sandwiches while sleeping in the car. The "amateur" era was all about making it difficult for the non-independently-wealthy to compete at all, or indenturing athletes for the glory of the state until they were used up and injured, then letting them fend for themselves without adequate prep or training.