Sports act to counter threat to sponsorships

Press, 13 June 1978, Page 30

Sports act to counter threat to sponsorships

By

KEVIN McMENAMIN

Sponsorship, be it from tobacco companies or other vested interests, is vital to sport in New Zealand, It is also irreplaceable.

This is rammed home with sledge-hammer force in a report released yesterday. The report, entitled “Sports sponsorship . . . the freedom to choose,” has been compiled by a group of sports administrators who purport to speak on behalf of the vast majority of New Zealand sportsmen and sportswomen.

| The group, who after prei liminary discussions came together as a committee, comprises Messrs L. E. August (New Zealand Trot- ! ting Conference), C. A. ißlazey (New Zealand Rugby Union), A. M. Hughes (New I Zealand Racing ConIference), T. J. Killalea (New J Zealand Football Association), V. K. Palmer (New I Zealand Golf Association), A. J. Smithard (Motorsport AsIsociation of New Zealand), R. A. Vance (New Zealand (Cricket Council) and I. D. , Wells (New Zealand Lawn Tennis Association), the (chairman.

The committee’s stated aim is to secure from both!

the Government and the Opposition “their stance on the funding of sport by the tobacco industry and we are asking for this stance to be made known in a reasonable period of time or, at the latest, in their election manifestos.”

The committee, furthermore, states that one object of the report is to present a case for sport to have freedom to choose its sponsorships without restrictions from the Government or from any special committee appointed by the Government.

The whole exercise was prompted by published remarks towards the end of last year attributed to the chairman of the Government’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health, Mr G. W. Holland, of Christchurch.

In one of these reports Mr Holland was quoted as say- ! ing that “it (the advisory committee) also wants to see cigarette firm sponsorship of sport prohibited.”

The report claims that it makes no difference that Mr Holland appeared to change his stance earlier this year when he was reported as saying: “What we want is just to get some measure of control of the advertising element that goes with sponsorship.” The new approach is regarded as “a back-door method of eliminating to-bacco-company sponsorship.” The sports committee has spared no effort in presenting its case. The report is a very bulky document, split into three sections. The first section is a wide-ranging review of the background to the question and includes plenty of supportive facts and figures.

The second section is a commissioned survey on the relationship between sports sponsorship and tobacco company involvement. One conclusion was that 96 per cent of people questioned did not believe that their consumption of a product had been affected by the

sponsorship activities of companies marketing the product.

The third section com-! prises more than 20 written responses from national sports associations which! are united in their desire to see sports sponsorship left ] alone by the Government. The majority of letters also! stress the importance of sponsorship to the survival | and growth of the various sports.

By going to the lengths which they have, the sports could be accused of overreacting to what they saw as a threat to their well-being. The response is, perhaps, the clearest indication of the importance they attach to sponsorship. While much of the report is repetitious, there are some interesting figures on individual sports memberships and the like. But possibly the most revealing feature is the extent and degree of the sponsorship provided by the tobacco companies.