The controversy surrounding Gina Rinehart’s sponsorship deal of netball with the Alinta Energy: Indigenous rights, respect for the environment, and their role in the sport

When Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart threw a financial lifeline to Netball Australia, she triggered a debate about sponsorships and the role of social and political issues in the sporting sphere. Then she walked away.

The drama surrounding the Diamonds is not new, and experts say it could become more common as athletes and fans take stronger stances on source of sponsorship money.

Last week, a group of fans went to the management of the football team to tell them to sever ties with the sponsor over its carbon emissions.

Pat Cummins, the Australian test cricket captain, raised issues with Cricket Australias deal with Alinta Energy, for the same reasons.

The objections focused on comments made by Rinehart’s father, Lang Hancock, when he ran her company, which was almost 40 years ago.

Rinehart is well known for her sponsorship deals with Australian sports teams. In the past, Rinehart was said to have “saved swimming.”

But Kevin Argus, a lecturer in marketing from RMIT University, said Rinehart’s decision on Saturday to pull funding from Netball Australia was a “lost opportunity” to “embrace the national mood.”

The athletes were worried that they’d be seen to be supporting discrimination against the aboriginals. Some people are concerned about the environment.

Donnell Wallam is a rising star who is set to make her debut this week as only the third Indigenous person to represent Australia in a sport.

Wallam had reportedly expressed reservations about wearing the Hancock logo due to comments Rinehart’s father made about Australia’s First Nations people.

His words are a dark reminder of racist attitudes toward Indigenous people, and though Rinehart promotes her longstanding support of Aboriginal communities through mining royalties and charities, she has never publicly condemned her father’s statements.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/23/sport/australia-netball-rinehart-diamonds-sponsorship-spt-intl-hnk/index.html

Rinehart and Hancock Prospecting withdraw their support of the Australian Netball Players’ Association – and why she doesn’t want to wear the logo

Wallam’s teammates have rallied around her, and when the team ran onto the court to play New Zealand in the Constellation Cup last week, they wore their old uniforms, without the Hancock logo.

In the statement on Saturday, Rinehart and Hancock Prospecting said there was no requirement for the Diamonds to wear the logo during the New Zealand games and they did not refuse to wear it.

The statement said Hancock’s majority-owned mining company Roy Hill would also pull its support of Netball WA, a state netball body, as the two companies “do not wish to add to Netball’s disunity problems.”

Separately, Rinehart and Hancock seemed to take a swipe at the players by saying they consider it “unnecessary for sports organisations to be used as a vehicle for social or political causes.”

There are more targeted ways to progress social and political causes without virtue signalling or for self-publicity.

The CEO of the Australian Netball Players’ Association told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday that Wallam had requested a special exemption not to wear the logo.

The sponsorship deal for the soccer team would have cost around two million Australian dollars a year, almost nothing for a company that had a huge profit on the back of iron-ore prices.

Ryan said, “there is a really important role that sporting organizations do play from grassroots right through to the elite to create a safe environment to have really strong social conversations.”

The players thanked other sponsors for their continued support but were displeased with the decision by Hanson to withdraw their sponsorship.

There are no reports of a split in the playing group and a protest on environmental grounds. One of the concerns the players had was support for our only Indigenous team member.

“Her 60,000-year-old culture will tell you that it’s important. Her 200 years of survival, and her fellow Indigenous people will tell you it’s important,” Saunders said.

“She has a very personal reason for not wanting to wear a logo that represents a person who said that her people should be sterilized or bred out,” she said. This is not a new issue for her. This is her life.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/23/sport/australia-netball-rinehart-diamonds-sponsorship-spt-intl-hnk/index.html

The Australia Netball Baseball Team Rinehart Diamonds Sponsorship Program Intl-hnk: How Aussie Athletics Impact on the Sports Industry

The company also funds services for remote and rural Aboriginal communities, including health and education programs, and Rinehart is a familiar face in elite sporting circles.

The Australian Olympic Team has recently been sponsored by a billionaire and he will continue to do so until at least the year 2026.

The Australian newspaper also weighed in with an editorial saying there was no room for “cancel culture” – “to sacrifice Mrs Rinehart because of comments made decades ago by her father, Lang Hancock, is a bridge too far.”

Kim Toffoletti said that it can be difficult to say no to a sponsorship offer in less established sports.

Toffoletti said it was hard to turn down that kind of money, as it kept the sport viable.

I don’t think it’s a failure of the sport but maybe the system in which certain sports are economically and culturally rewarded over others means that many missed out.

Gen Z, born in the late 1990s to around 2010 is made up of sports stars who are more accepting of new ideas than those running established sporting bodies and brands.

“Some of these sports have got very old-fashioned business models, which are built probably around 30-40 years ago in a different era,” Andrew Hughes, a marketing expert from the Australian National University, told CNN Sport.

Saunders, from The Brand Builders, said athletes are realizing that protecting their personal brand is more important than falling into line with the values of their sponsors.

“Your brand is actually your most valuable asset because after the game, or after your career, that’s the thing that you get to take with you into employment or other opportunities in life,” she said.

When a sports career ends, athletes who aren’t earning big money need to find another source of income.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/23/sport/australia-netball-rinehart-diamonds-sponsorship-spt-intl-hnk/index.html

Are Female Athletic Players Safe? Comment on Rinehart’s Climbing and Drug Smuggling Arbitrary Decisions in the Presence of Public Support

Kevin said that Rinehart’s cancellation of the contract shows how badly she wants to win public support.

He said that there would have been a better option to get the players to understand how they can work together for the benefit of both parties.

When athletes behave as normal functioning human beings, abandoning sponsorships demonstrates reactive decision making and shining a light on the need for bolder, transforming leadership, he said.

News last week that a Russian court upheld Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner’s sentence of nine years in a penal colony for drug smuggling surprised no one. While Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, deemed the appeal “another sham judicial proceeding” and asked that Griner “be released immediately,” the outcome continues to hang in the air as her legal team considers next steps.

Griner’s continued Russian imprisonment sits among a barrage of headlines regarding dangerous situations for female athletes. While the circumstances may be different, one thing remains the same: female athletes are not safe. How can society expect women to be safe if sports can’t protect them?

Despite foggy detail and little evidence, for example, when stories emerged that Iranian rock climber Elnaz Rekabi had gone missing after competing in the Asian Continental Climbing Championships in Seoul without wearing a hijab, many believed them, with much speculation about her passport, her cell phone and her whereabouts.

The climber posted to social media that she didn’t mean to climb without her hijab and had made a mistake in a rush to compete. After she returned home several days later, her head was covered with a baseball hat and hood, as well as cheering crowds greeted her and the team.

How a Women’s Sexual Conducting Role in Sports Can be Harmened: The Case of Peng Shuai, the World isn’t Safe

Reactions to Rekabi and Peng show how we know how to understand how women living under repressive regimes can not be as safe as they could be. Even in situations where they eventually appear to be safe for, well, appearance’s sake, many of us remain unsure. Why? Because we have reason to be wary.

Rekabi’s story and its many unknowns are eerily familiar. Just last year, Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai disappeared from public view after she posted sexual misconduct allegations against former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli to China’s Twitter-like platform, Weibo.

The Chinese Olympic Committee chief of staff, Wang Kan, was present at the time where Peng denied making the allegations. She made an appearance at the Beijing Winter Olympic Games after being forced to do so by the United Nations and the Women’s Tennis Association.

The evidence shows that instead of looking to dismantle misogynist systems, society often wants women to bear the blame for the violence that happens to them. That sends a chilling message: You know this world isn’t safe, and you didn’t do everything you could to protect yourself.

The report shows that there has not been much, if any, to speak of, even in the table of contents, which includes references to Systemic Abuse, there was no way out, Emotional manipulation, and “yet another monster”.

The Yates Report on the NWSL, a document commissioned by US Soccer in the wake of Riley’s firing and completed by former acting attorney general of the United States Sally Yates on behalf of law, was not going to be undone by those consequences.

Women know about the lack of accountability but they don’t take up enough space to prompt more action. It is also part of the reason why so many of us cannot look away from what is ahead for an Iranian rock climber, a US basketball star, and a professional soccer player. If these athletes, who work in a world filled with rules and judges, aren’t safe, what can the rest of us expect?

These stories are wide-ranging and different, but they speak to a deeper point. Sport is controlled in society. Rules, officials, managers, owners and fans watch every move an athlete makes.

Drug tests are needed to make sure fair play. And there are consequences for dangerous behaviors – heightened punishments for fouls deemed flagrant in the form of free throws, penalty kicks and power plays. A slide tackle in soccer with cleats up? Don’t do it again, this is a red card. Throw an elbow into someone’s face on the basketball court? A seat is a good idea.

We can and should expect change, a revolution that leads to safe space for not just female athletes, but all women. As the Portland Thorns beat the Kansas City Current for its historic third NWSL title on Saturday, fans at Audi Field held signs that read “Support the Players,” a mantra that applies both on and off the field.

Women are more than holding their own as earners thanks largely to leveraging their social media popularity. Along with Dunne, other female student athletes have been minted millionaires by the N.I.L. rules, including Haley and Hanna Cavinder, twins who play college basketball at Miami; Sunisa Lee, the Auburn gymnast and Olympic gold medalist at the Tokyo Games; and Paige Bueckers and Aziz Fudd, all-American basketball stars at Connecticut.

Tara VanDerveer sees the part of theN.I.L. revolution that focuses on beauty as regressive for female athletes. VanDerveer started coaching in 1978, a virtual eon before the popularization of the internet and social media, but she said the technology was upholding old sexist notions.

Andrea Geurin, a researcher of sports business at Loughborough University in England, studied female athletes trying to make the Rio Olympics in 2016, many of them American collegians. “One of the big themes that came out is the pressure that they felt to post suggestive or sexy photos of themselves” on social media, Geurin said.

She noted that while many athletes found making public images to be one of the best ways to increase their online popularity, some decided it wasn’t worth it.