The Sport for Business Sunday Supplement draws together smart and innovative writing and thinking from the world of sport and business…
This week we focus on the growing rise of disgrace insurance to protect sponsors against the wrongdoing of their chosen endorsers; how a 90 times national champions was forgotten because she was ‘only a woman’ and how the Ivy League colleges in the US are tackling the concussion issue through replacing tackle training with technology.
For the tennis racket maker Head, this week’s revelation that its poster girl, Maria Sharapova, had tested positive for a banned drug was doubly bad news. Not only is it now sponsoring a player who may not be allowed to compete for years, but it will also find it harder to claim recompense if she gets into trouble again.
Welcome to the arcane world of “disgrace insurance” — where the more tarnished the celebrity endorsing your product, the harder it is to win a payout.
Ms Sharapova’s admission that she had taken the banned endurance-enhancing substance meldonium has highlighted a growing and lucrative market in disgrace insurance for prominent corporate sponsors.
Brokers report rapid growth in this niche market in recent times, with businesses paying millions to insure against damage to their sales and reputation, in the wake of several high-profile celebrity scandals.
Read the full article at www.ft.com
One of Britain’s greatest sports stars faded into obscurity ‘because she was a woman’ – and it’s still happening today, warns actress Maxine Peake
Before there was Victoria, Laura and Lizzie, there was Beryl.
The exploits of Victoria Pendleton, Lizzie Armitstead and Laura Trott have raised the profile of the sport to new levels and contributed to a boom in women’s cycling.
But they would be the first to acknowledge they owe a debt to one of the great unsung heroines of the sport – Beryl Burton, one of Britain’s greatest, and least known, sporting heroes – male or female.
Competing from the late Fifties to the early Eighties, before the days of big name sponsors and scientific diets and training plans, Burton won more than 90 domestic cycling championships and seven world titles before her name was largely forgotten.
Read the Full Article at www.telegraph.co.uk
Recently, it has been reported that the teams making up the Ivy League Conference in American Football have agreed to stop player-on-player tackling during practices next season as concern about concussions continues to rise.
However, even before the Ivy League coaches came together to discuss the issue, Dartmouth College had already been using a form of technology for players to perform their tackling safely.
A radio controlled tackling dummy, designed by four students from the school, has been wheeling around the Dartmouth practice field for the past couple of seasons. This mobile “humanoid” resembles an actual football player’s size and weight, while matching their speed.
Read the full article at www.sporttechie.com
