The business of sport - how the commercial pipers are calling all the tunes

Look at sporting photographs from (say) the nineteen sixties and compare them with modern images and the most notable difference is how the logos stand out today. Sponsorship can be good for brand promotion and also provide important revenues to sports clubs and teams - but all too often commercial considerations dominate as the business pipers seek more and more to call the sporting tune.

ICC Cricket World Cup an example of gross over-commercialisation

The Cricket World Cup opens in the West Indies on 11th March 2007. Forty- nine days later this grotesquely puffed up tournament will come to its end with the final in Barbados. Does it really take seven weeks to decide which is the best One Day side in the world? Of course not. The whole overblown schedule has only one purpose - to maximise the revenues from television rights. There are sixteen competing teams and logic would suggest that you divide them into four groups with the top two teams in each group progressing directly to a knock out stage - quarter finals, semi finals and a final. That would be a four week tournament which (you would think) would be more than enough. But no, the ICC wants to milk the tournament to the maximum so we have to endure a wholly spurious 'Super Eight' stage so that the sponsors get their money's worth.

Indian cricket's sponsors increasingly run the game

The ICC's sponsorship voracity is partly a function of their fear that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will increasingly dictate both the global finances of cricket and the international schedules. The unseemly stand off last year between the ICC and the BCCI was partly about power, but mostly about money. No other international team can generate anything like the revenues from advertising and sponsorship that India can - so when the sponsors (and their agents the BCCI) laid down the law the ICC had to cave in.

Formula one was run for years by the tobacco industry giants

There is no more venal example of sport being dominated by business than the ignoble history of how the tobacco giants dominated Formula one motorsport for decades. From the moment that Lotus abandoned British Racing Green in 1969 and branded their car in the 'Gold Leaf' cigarette brand livery for the next thirty years the cars of the major teams all looked like cigarette packets. And the organisers of F1, who could all add up pretty well, did their utmost to bow to the Cigarette brands' wishes. As anti tobacco advertising legislation began to take hold in the 1990s the directors of Formula one fought and finessed to try and keep their paymasters' brands on display on cars, drivers' overalls and at the circuits. The F1 schedule was expanded to give more promotional opportunities and locations were preferred if there were no local laws prohibiting tobacco advertising (or if a special case could be made for F1 - as it often was).

Stadiums and teams change their names to suit the sponsors

When Arsenal Football Club moved to a new stadium they followed the example of many other sports clubs before them and sold the name of the ground to the highest bidder. We are now supposed to call the splendid and famous Newlands cricket ground in Cape Town by the name of its sponsor rather than by its historic name. And to call the Western Australia state cricket team the 'Retravison Warriors' rather than by the name that served them well for a hundred years. There are thousands of other examples of traditions being cast aside when the sponsors' wallets open.

Does it all really matter?

When sport welcomes sponsors, but sets limits within which they must work, it is for the good of all. The International Olympic Commission (IOC) sets a pretty good example. Sure they allow sponsors to be linked with the Olympics and this provides important revenues. But the sponsors do not dictate what happens at the Games. Athletes' shirts are logo free and there is no advertising at the stadiums. The whole Olympic Games run for little over two weeks - and that for an event in which there are more than thirty sports. And the irony is that when a sports tournament is concentrated, and when its commercial exploitation is tightly controlled, this can actually work to the benefit of the sponsors. The vulgar plethora of commercial messages we will have to endure in the Cricket World Cup next year will probably be far less effective for the sponsors than if the ICC had followed the IOC's example. Less would have been more - but that, I'm afraid, is a lost cause; the money men have taken over the noble game for ever.