Sponsoring events...

In this forum, numerous examples have been cited that Indian Subcontinent is the major revenue generators for the game of cricket. In times of competition, sponsors will look for a deal in which air-time during the match is not sold to advertisements with such highly popular cricketers endorses their rival company. For e.g. in 2003 Sachin Tendulkar was endorsing Victor, a motorcycle from TVS, which was official sponsor Hero Honda's competitor; Saurav Ganguly was endorsing Coca-Cola, official sponsor Pepsi's competitor; and Rahul Dravid was endorsing Samsung, official sponsor LG Electronics’ competitor.
There would be no motive for any company to organize such an enormous events if they cannot get desired marketing. So it was ICC’s obligation to put such rules in the contract of players so that they can rake in sponsors.
Players may have some ongoing contracts with other companies and such clause of ICC may breach them. Therefore there is a conflict between freedom of players and ICC to protect sponsorship to make financial success. But as sponsoring such huge events calls for multi millions or billions of investments from sponsors, some legal protection becomes necessary for them.
Besides players having deal with competitors, there is also the problem of some rival company without officially sponsoring the event get in publicity using the events. ICC had also made some rules against such marketing techniques. The most famous case which I remember is use of catch line by Pepsi “Nothing Official about it” during Cricket World Cup 1996. This was direct attempt by Pepsi to mock Coca Cola the official sponsors of world cup. ICC filed the case against HPCL, Britannia and Philips India for running the commercials based on World cup for their products.
Thus these all are some of the marketing issues which companies face while sponsoring an event.
Thanks
Tanvi Garg(u109161)