Brands Abandon Athletes After Olympic Disappointments, Says Expert

With a number of near misses in various sports, including the disqualification of Vinesh Phogat and weightlifter Mirabai Chanu, who bagged a medal in the women’s 49 kg competition but missed out by whiskers, the overall show of India at the 2024 Paris Olympics has been lukewarm. Though, we cannot reject the fact that our athletes make us proud.

Are we, as a nation, only allowed to celebrate their hits but not boost morale at the misses? This could very well be true for brands as well. Last year, when Neeraj Chopra won an Olympic gold — the first Asian athlete ever to win in javelin — every brand was celebrating by putting out congratulatory posts, most of them unauthorized.

The same trend was followed this year when a few congratulatory posts were rolled out by the brands before a heartbroken disqualification of Phogat. But after the incident, pratically no brand has come out in support.

Says Ramakrishnan R, co-founder at Baseline Ventures- a sports marketing firm and the agency that handles Vinesh Phogat overacknowledgment of an individual athlete in on-going passionate campaigns can work in both ways.

Brand custodians are the very important elements which determine how the world looks at athletes and have this disturbing pattern in life: they run to identify with assured success and, in the same speed, distance themselves to athletes who fail in their respective sports. This very transactional approach to sports marketing can be very disheartening and undermines the very spirit of competitive sports. In today’s day and age, meaningful partnerships should be valued beyond moment marketing; it’s time brand custodians got a new perspective.

The co-founder elaborated on his sentiments regarding using LinkedIn: “More disturbing was how brand custodians went completely gaga about an athlete or two just before a medal round and then ended up retracting or going cold when the final was not in favor of the athlete.”

He further raises questions on the integrity of brand partnerships and the true essence of a sporting nation. “This certainly is not a sign of a sporting nation or a credible partnership. Falling short doesn’t make an atlete bad, they still possess skills which common folks can only dream about. A credible association should be to celebrate competitiveness which ever level an athlete competes,” he adds.