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Latest News Index on Sponsorship Index on Sponsorship: tales from a needle match
Latest News Index on Sponsorship Index on Sponsorship: tales from a needle match 
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| Thursday, 26 July 2007 | |
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Cycling’s ‘blue riband’, Le Tour De France, is rocked by doping scandals that may sink the sport as sponsors, including ICT heavyweights, review their involvement. A sport implodes…
OK, some of the youth culture courted by and pandered to by mobile telephone companies revolves around the recreational use of narcotics. That does not extend, however, to high-price and high-profile brand association with drug cheats in a ‘sport’ like cycling. That is the position where T-Mobile finds itself in the latest twist of parent Deutsche Telekom’s long-running history of cycling sponsorship.. Telekom’s only past individual winners of the Tour de France’s fabled ‘yellow jersey’ have either admitted to, or been found guilty by omission of, drug use in pursuit of the corporate cycling goal. In this year’s Tour, Patrik Sinkewitz joined former ‘champions” Bjarne Riis and Jan Ullrich on T-Mobile’s sullied roll of doping dishonour. News of the drugs test failed by Sinkewitz led to German broadcasters cancelling live coverage of this year’s Tour. You don’t have to be a marketing Einstein (also a German, although he never tested positive) to realise that this diminishes the event’s value to sponsors. Small wonder that T-Mobile is said to be re-thinking its involvement with the event. Sinkewitz is not alone in the current crop of cycling cheats, as it turns out. This week has seen pre-race favourite Alexandre Vinokourov kicked out for doping (along with the rest of his Kazakh-sponsored Astana team) followed yesterday, sensationally, by race leader Michael Rasmussen of Rabobank who was removed by his own team after a string of possibly missed drug tests. T-Mobile is not the only high-profile ICT sponsor tied up in pro cycling. Basque telco Euskatel, consultants CSC and Bouygues Telecom of France are also lead team sponsors while many others support the sport. In the current climate of scandal it is hard to see what companies such as these stand to gain from their continued involvement in cycling. Le Tour, arguably the world of sport’s largest annual event, may implode as a result. If you admire the sport, you’d weep… but even the most partisan cycling-mad CEO would now think twice before putting the company’s name on a team’s maillots, jaunes or otherwise. Jim Chalmers |
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