By Frankie Chee
Sports Reporter
frankie@sph.com.sg

 

THEY say money makes the world go round. The same can be said for sport, of course – money makes the balls go round.

Almost every team, sporting event and competition has a sponsor, if not an army of sponsors, behind it.

Great Eastern and Yeo’s keep the S-League afloat, Standard Chartered bankrolls the Singapore Marathon, or Marathon Singapore as it will be called from this year on, and where would our bowlers be without major sponsor Canon?

Clear-cut indications of how much corporations pump into sports will be the $300,000 from Five Star Tours for Geylang United before the S-League season started this year, or the $3 million given by Nestle Milo last week (Feb 19) for local sports development.

That same week, the Singapore Tote Board and Singapore Pools dished out $455,000 to reward champion athletes as part of the Multi-million Dollar Award Programme. They have been doing this since 1995, with the $1.9 million forked out in 2002 being one of, if not the, biggest sum given.

Also, the Singapore Badminton Association received its biggest sponsorship from a single contributor when Chinese sports brand Li-Ning promised them $8.8 million earlier this month. That sum will be disbursed in cash, apparel and equipment over a four-year period.

Those are staggering numbers and there’s no way to describe how handicapped the sports fraternity would be without such support.

Surely, there wouldn’t be a purse of $1.8 million waiting for the top golfers at this year’s HSBC Women’s Champions 2010, if not for the bank’s sponsorship. More importantly, the golf event that will, this year, attract the top 55 ranked players on the LPGA’s Official Money List to Tanah Merah Country Club probably wouldn’t exist.

Outside of Singapore, just imagine how plain and boring the Manchester United jersey would look without the Nike slash and AIG logo emblazoned across the front. That’s a sure success for a drop in merchandise sales.

But while AIG and Nike may be getting a cut of jersey sales, there’s not much rewards in store for local sponsors to reap.

No one is going to run out and buy a Canon camera because the brand is splashed across Remy Ong’s chest, neither will they be thirsting for Milo just because local athletes are drinking it. And sure, the billboards at S-League matches will be screaming Great Eastern, but chances are you wouldn’t be looking for your Great Eastern financial advisor anytime soon.

So why do these companies invest so much, knowing it may not result in an equal amount of revenue?

Marketing and brand exposure are natural business-driven reasons, but forging an association with the sport or event is an equally strong incentive for these companies, nevermind the 'loss'.

Pilot Pen’s general manager Benjamin The explained that very clearly in an earlier report in The Straits Times: 'We are unlikely to cover our association with the YOG. But in the long run, we will feel proud about having worked with them and would like to be remembered for it.'

Apart from supplying the writing instruments for the sports event, the Japan-headquartered company will also be making a cash contribution, with its total sponsorship worth up to $500,000.

In a similar light, OCBC looked beyond marketing when it decided to set aside $1.2 million for this year’s OCBC Cycle Singapore. As Koh Ching Ching, the bank’s head of group corporate communications, put it: 'Branding is a nice benefit, but our main purpose of sponsoring this event is to engage the community and connect with them through an emotive activity.'

Consider it 'National Service' on the companies’ part to contribute money for an intangible result, even though some of these companies are not locally born.

That is more than what I can say for homegrown telecoms giant SingTel.

To be fair, SingTel did invest heavily into sports when it slipped in as the title sponsor for the Formula One race here after it was confirmed that the race will come here. Kudos to them.

But the telco is saying no to the $40 million that Fifa is supposedly asking for to screen the World Cup here, because it sees no way of recovering that money. Can this sacrifice not be the company’s 'National Service'? Especially since it had a hand in luring Fifa to sharpen its claws after it blew StarHub out of the English Premier League rights with, reportedly, a whopping $400 million.

$40 million for the World Cup is a large sum of money, but it should be peanuts to SingTel, whose combined mobile customer base in the region ballooned to 285 million last year, as compared to 52 million the year before. Furthermore, it will recover some part of that investment from subscribers who want to watch the games.

The company’s net profit rose 7.7 per cent to $945 million for the three months to June 2009; compare that to foreign-based $8.8million-sponsor Li-Ning, whose profit after tax in six months to June 2009 was $100.2 million, and you’ll see who’s feeling a bigger pinch.

After the years of support SingTel has received from Singaporeans, the company must recognise that it owes something to them.

Take a tip from the other sponsors, Sports Pte Ltd is not always a profit-making business, it’s about the reputation and association with the people and the sport.