‘Cancelling’ sponsors backfires

Ricky Ponting, one of Australia’s most successful cricket captains and greatest batsmen, makes an important point when he says current players could leave the game poorer for the next generation in the wake of “sportswashing” controversies. These are currently affecting several sports.

It is no surprise that Hancock Prospecting has cancelled a $15m deal with Netball Australia and Netball Western Australia after Diamonds players refused to wear its logo. As the company’s executive chair, Gina Rinehart, said, it is unnecessary for sports organisations to be used as the vehicle for social or political causes. There were “more targeted and genuine ways’’, she said, to progress such causes, without virtue-signalling or self-publicity.

The discomfort of Indigenous netballer Donnell Wallam over wearing the company’s logo, in view of comments by founder Lang Hancock 38 years ago, is understandable, but the team’s truculence in boycotting the logo, despite Hancock Prospecting’s record of practical Indigenous support, was foolish overkill. The sport is now in financial peril.

Be it footballers refusing to wear rainbow jerseys or Muslim cricketers avoiding logos promoting alcohol, individual conscience matters. Yet sponsors should be judged on how well they back players and encourage grassroots participation. On that criteria, Mrs Rinehart has a strong record. Hancock Prospecting, which says it did not insist on its logo being on the Diamonds uniform, had committed funds to netball programs in Indigenous communities. In the era of professional sport, woke efforts to “cancel’’ sponsors undermine sport and its players.