The effect cricket Australia’s cheating has on sponsors

The Australian cricket team got caught red-handed at ball tampering, blatant cheating not quite at drug usage or match fixing levels but still very much cheating. Take into consideration that cricket is built on being the gentleman’s game playing well within the rules, ball tampering is very serious.

Lets look at the outer consequences from the result of a sporting team cheating. Here is some well shown footage

Another clip here

During this act of cheating you can clearly see brand logos of Cricket Australia, Asics and Qantas. Cricket Australia would always be damaged by this but what about the other two and potentially the other non shown sponsors of the Australian cricket team?

With this footage shown repeatedly and all over the globe in conjunction with an act of cheating it can’t be good right? Qantas has said that it wants Cricket Australia to do the right thing and quickly, perhaps meaning it wants heads to roll and positional changes as to completely refresh from this incident. Alan Joyce has also said he is “extremely disappointing” about the incident because his Qantas logo is now on the front pages of newspapers and news headlines as it is printed on team gear.

Asics the maker of the clothing Cricket Australia wears on and of the field are in a similar position of having their brand associated with cheats. Skins was shaken up running a full page spread on the issue:

There is one common theme with these sponsors reaction apart from disappointment and its the calls for change in Cricket Australia. My understanding of this is these companies know it’s those at the top that can prevent this happening, those at the top if doing their job properly it wouldn’t have happened. These sponsor believe that Cricket Australia management are at most, to blame for this shocking behavior.

Like good responses to negative image and press the sponsors are also wanting a reset, or refresh as to give appearance that the bad guys are gone and this incident will never happen again. Well the cheating in this form shouldn’t happen again or for a very long time, because all those involved have been ruined left, right and center. Rightly so, they cheated and Australia is big on sportsmanship, playing fair and playing hard.

At the end of the day these brands didn’t cheat, nor have they done anything wrong (in this instance) you’d expect no share drops or avoid using and buying. It’s just interesting that sponsoring a sports team has risks from this cheating incident to poor on and off field behavior. It can also reap the benefits in seeing your logo 20 years down the track in a highlights reel or when the team wins a major competition.

Sadly for those involved with Cricket Australia their branding just got slung in with cheats.