New York Times - Good read

Sunderland’s Deal Raises Eyebrows

By ED UPRIGHT




On July 18, Premier League club Sunderland revealed its new home uniform.

The shirt was not particularly noteworthy. After all, there is only so much you can do with red and white stripes. But those famous colors — Sunderland remains the last striped team to win the title in a English top division — were adorned with a new and unusual sponsor: Invest in Africa. This unique and controversial deal is causing plenty of debate.

Invest in Africa is a not-for-profit “partnership of companies” with the declared aim of “promoting Africa as open for business, by challenging misconceptions and inspiring new investors.” The organization boasts of an African middle class of 300,000,000, which is “soon to be bigger than the entire populations of Brazil and Russia combined.” As a result, the publicity material reads, Africa is the “world’s best-kept investment secret.”

The company asserts that a shirt sponsorship with Sunderland is a “unique opportunity to use the global reach of the Premier League to help spread prosperity across Africa and bring new opportunities to local businesses.” In return, Sunderland will apparently “build its fan base and global brand, particularly in Africa where nearly 300 million people watch Premier League matches.”



When the deal was first announced in late June four men posed outside Sunderland’s Stadium of Light. The club’s owner, the Texan Ellis Short, spoke of a “sponsor that will allow us to grow our market share worldwide.” David Miliband MP, Sunderland vice-chairman and the former British foreign secretary, hollered, “Join us, help build Invest in Africa and reap the benefits.” Midfielder Craig Gardner grinned and posed with a soccer ball. The fourth man was Aidan Heavey, Tullow Oil chief executive and a man with a huge role to play.

Tullow Oil operates in 15 African countries and is the “continent’s leading independent oil company.” Tullow is the founding partner of Invest in Africa and, as yet, the only investor in the initiative. While Invest in Africa and Tullow are technically separate entities, the name on Sunderland’s shirt is exclusively financed by the oil company.

The new Sunderland jersey.

Since its founding in 1985, Tullow has found a huge amount of oil. The company will soon begin extraction in Uganda (where it estimates reserves of up to 2.5 billion barrels) and recently made new discoveries in Kenya.

While the “scramble for Africa’s oil” continues with ferocity, Tullow’s role in the rush for resources has been criticized. In February, Foreign Policy magazine reported on “Uganda’s oil scandal” and the “complete absence of corporate social responsibility on the part of Tullow,” where villagers had been driven off their land with no compensation. Tullow was accused of paying millions of dollars of bribes to Ugandan officials. Tullow denied the allegations and took the unusual step of publishing supporting documents on its Web site.

Deep concerns with the allocation of oil resources and corruption, however, persist.

After the announcement of Sunderland’s Invest in Africa deal there was some negative reaction in Britain. The London-based N.G.O. Platform saw the arrangement as Tullow “framing its drilling operations in the rhetoric of growth and development.” After this, The Independent published an article on the “concerns over the suitability of Sunderland’s new sponsor.”

Tullow once again reacted quickly to the criticism, with its head of media relations giving a series of interviews to the Sunderland fan site Roker Report. In these posts George Cazenove answers questions on exclusion zones for fishermen around oil rigs, corporate social responsibility and transparency.

Cazenove responded to the coverage with: “The guys who put together these comments about Tullow are anti-oil and anti-oil in Africa, and they don’t believe that oil companies should be operating in Africa. That’s fine, that’s their perspective, there’s a perfectly coherent, intellectual argument to support that. There’s an equally coherent argument on our side that drilling for oil in Africa and doing business in Africa, which we’ve done successfully for 26 years is a good thing.”

Sunderland supporters, meanwhile, are divided. Many have been seduced by the financial possibilities for the club, as Miliband asserted in an interview, saying, “It’s the best commercial deal in Sunderland’s history.” Others feel much more concerned. Some have pointed out that the reputation of the club is now aligned with that of the African oil industry. Many feel morally compromised by the positive language of Invest in Africa and the more complicated situation with Tullow Oil. Some, acutely aware of their place in the soccer ecosystem, simply do not believe the hype. During the launch, Heavey said, “At a stroke, this association will make Sunderland the most popular club in Africa.” That seems unlikely.

In the past Sunderland’s sponsors have been local brewers, car dealers and online bingo companies. This big international deal for a midranking club shows how branding and business development dominate the Premier League at all levels. If Sunderland increases its “market share” in Africa successfully enough it may be able to rise a few places up a league already clogged with money. It remains to be seen how many more partners will join Invest in Africa, how Ugandan corruption will be dealt with and how much damage the oil industry may do to the people, politics and environment of Africa.

 

I think most of us have concerns and doubts about the morality and ethics of this deal however, they are putting 20 mil a year into my club so I dont give a toss.

 

Invest in Africa. Sounds terrible ? Don't think so.

Brining the plight - or more probably - the OPPORTUNITY for the continent of Africa to the media hotspot that is the Premier League is a fine ideal. However it is done. Someone has the idea it is good to do it through sponsorship of a Premier League club.... Luckily us?

It should be two way. Instead of Seoul we should be in Lagos.

Mind you. £20m is cheap for our commitment.

x

 

canny read that, cheers 83

 

Making the NY Times is serious publicity in the upper strata of wealth in US. Could be ES is dangling a financial bait looking for a bite. Investors are already looking at Burma to open up markets so staying with Tullow could be massive.

 

yep.

did you notice the authors name?

Ed Upright

 

Good read that... Sounds like the west are not happy with Africa doing well in the oil Industry to me. I'm just surprised America hasn't sent jets in to bomb them because they have weapons of mass destruction.

Joking aside, make of this what you want. I don't think the deal will help Improve our following in Africa, I think it's the 20 million per season that we are interested in and that's it.

Business is business and people opinions aren't taken into account when there is money on the table.

 

Dunno why people think there is morality and ethical issues involved in getting with an oil company as a sponsor?? Oil companies do plenty of good stuff, and i know for a fact that it is being pushed by alot of them to give back to the community. Out here in Oz, there are plenty of small indigenous communities in the outback that rely on oil companies to survive. They provide them with jobs, counselling for addiction, give them homes, and pay them alot better than anything they would get out there. Chevron sponors a fun run down here in Oz to raise money for a kids chairty, Santos do the same with a cycle (they shut down the main freeway for this and tens of thousands take part).

In Africa it's not the oil companies that are the problem, its the corruption that exists within the governments. Oil companies are supplying a massive demand from the world's population, and because of the growing demand, and dwindling supplies - they are being forced to drill in more hostile environments. The oil companies pay the government what the governments demand. It's not their fault the greedy ****s stash it away in offshore accounts and dont give to the country. This is what people dont understand. They are very quick to jump on the bandwagon and point their fingers at the most public figure... which is normally the oil company.

And all the time i have inductions reminding me of the ethics and morals involved in working in this industry. And a big no-no is accepting bribes, gifts, or even giving either to anybody in the oil industry. Me buying a beer in the airport for the Company Man could even be construed as me buying favour with that particular client for preferential treatment...

 

What is morally right or wrong?

Africa is a paradise of natural resources. It is the birthplace of mankind and it Ias riches beyond the imagination.

However, with very few exceptions, Africa is the pauper of the world too. It is trying to play catch up with the east and the west and to do that, it will need to make bedfellows with some good, bad and downright unsavory individuals and companies.

If they were killing the indigenous populations or causing huge environmental mayhem things may be different. However, oil is something that is an essential resource to us all and until a viable alternative is sourced, vital for our survival.

If Africa and more importantly, Africans themselves benefit by having their infrastructure improved and standard of living raised, who are we in our comfortable western lives to lecture them. I am a massive David Milliband supporter (a true PM in waiting for me and still destroys me to see his lame duck brother leading the labour party) and I don't believe he would sign up to anything that would be bad for Africa. He was as Foreign Secretary, a leading light in the development of that amazing continent, so that won't have changed.

I'm proud we are part of that investment and development in Africa and if that also raises our profile and more importantly our revenue, then all the better.

 

With Gil T on this one don't give a flying rats arse who are giving us money as long as they do.

 

Who cares where the money comes from. Nee one cares where Chelsea or Man city get theres from.