Sponsors Behaving Badly
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It’s been a bad week for tennis scandal. Beyond the whole Dubai debacle, the sports world lost an estimated $100 Million in sponsorships. The details of its affects on tennis are starting to roll in now.
ADHEREL
When he wasn’t lying about his genealogical ties to Stanford University or macking on dude’s wives in right front of them, lying about how much money he gave (or didn’t) give to children with cancer, and laundering money through a Mexican gang, R. Allen Stanford was a generous patron of tennis.
SFG sponsored a lot tennis, with cash and deals flowing into the ATP, the Outback Series, the Andy Roddick Foundation, and the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami.
Employees of Stanford Financial Group are reportedly telling investigators to follow the sports marketing money. That can’t be good.
Last night, the ATP “terminated” Stanford as their investment adviser, which one would guess means cutting all ties to the company. Alternatively, the Outback Champions website is chock full of Stanford logos, and they’ve been silent on the whole matter thus far. No word out of the Roddick Foundation either.
The tournament director of the Sony Ericsson Open, owned by IMG and taking place next month, however, said the event plans to keep Stanford signs in place until there is a compelling reason not to do so and honor its contract.
Really? How much more “compelling” can it get?
We’ll see in the coming weeks.
For now, IMG’s got other troubles with the Stanford scandal though, having wrapped big PGA names like Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, and Arnold Palmer into money management and endorsement deals.
According the NY Post, “Stanford’s alleged fraud could cost IMG north of $10 million in fees, as well as any clients who got burned in the scandal.”
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