WITH THE Cricket World Cup less than twoweeks away, I want to take up a few lines to talk about other sports.
Track and field, football and cricket are the mainstays of Jamaica's sporting wealth and because of this, it is quite understandable that a lot of the money corporate Jamaica chooses to spend on sport goes into these areas. Of course, the outpouring of sponsorships in these areas has little to do with a company's corporate duty to the community, as they so often claim during press conferences to announce their 'kindness'. The gestures, however, really come because of a thing called mileage.
With 30,000 people watching the national team play football during World Cup qualification at the National Stadium and quite possibly over a million watching on television, whether live or delayed, it is only good business acumen t your company, making it visible to that kind of audience.
Normally, it would take a good advertising campaign to get that sort of mileage, however, advertising costs can be significantly reduced by using teams that play sport to promote your product or service.
With this in mind, it seems clear that corporate Jamaica would pull out all the stops t themselves with the Cricket World Cup and they have!
Big-name brands
Scotiabank, Pepsi, Cable and Wireless and Red Stripe are among some of the big-name brands the World Cup will be recognised alongside or vice versa.
All of this being said, my argument really is for the smaller sports that can't draw the kind of attention football, cricket and track can.
Those sports - netball, swimming, field hockey, tennis, table tennis - also help in nation building. Just like in any other sport, people are taught discipline, perseverance, the value of hard work and the importance of fair play.
This lends itself to society's growth and corporate Jamaica must be aware of that. While companies won't be able to affix a dollar value to the fact that these small sports serve the same functions as the larger ones, there are big, long-term benefits to them.
When young, bright businessmen join companies and become con-tributing members of society and help that society to grow, the possibilities of making profits increase. Eventually, these people become your biggest consumers and should be nurtured.
Sport, whether big or small, helps to mould these contributors by giving them focus and providing an opportunity for upward mobility whether it be from sport or from other areas they would have improved in as a result of playing sport.
The prognosis, therefore, is sports like netball and swimming, both of which have big competitions coming up this year, need to be better sponsored.
CARIFTA Swim champs
The Amateur Swimming Associa-tion of Jamaica, for instance, is hosting the CARIFTA Swimming Champion-ships from April 7-10 while the Jamaica Netball Association has to send a team to New Zealand for the World Netball Championships.
I'm not saying that companies have an unlimited inflow of cash to spend on every sport, but I am of the opinion that some of these companies do need to find ways of involving the smaller sports in more long-term ventures than they currently do.
The small sports also need to find ways of making more for themselves. Their associations need to find ways of working similar to businesses, though this might be a little difficult bearing in mind the big sports in Jamaica are yet to learn the art of doing so. These sports, at this point, can't even think about paying players just yet, and all they want is enough funding to successfully run their various competitions and projects for enhancement.
Think about that and I'll leave something with you in the meantime.
I was talking to JNA president, Marva Bernard, yesterday, and she, while saying she understood the bigger companies fascination with the big three sports in Jamaica, was worried that one day Jamaica would be hard-pressed to find girls who play for the country with no reward save the love of the game and the pride of being the best and representing your country.
Send feedback to paul-andre. walker@gleanerjm.com
