Is Lance Armstrong A Cause Of Sponsors?

Rather often we hear in the news about unprofessional behaviour in sports. As a result, the sport as well as the sponsorship is affected in a negative way. Sponsors are afraid that their brand will be associated with something negative like doping, because initially all they want is positive publicity. Due to this, a couple of years ago the Rabobank decided to stop with the sponsorship of male race cyclists. After being one of the major sponsors, the Rabobank made this decision because of the shocking doping case against cyclist Lance Armstrong. But what are the consequences that Lance Armstrong has caused for the advertising market of sponsors?
There are many sports that include athletes who are sponsored. Take for example race cycling, golf

Due to the doping scandal, the sponsors brand image was affected since the negative image that Armstrong created caused an attitude change of the consumers. Only the consumers who are attached to the athlete, in this case Lance Armstrong, or to the brand involved in the scandal are the ones that will not change their consumer behaviour. Fact is that the majority of consumers did change their view on the brand and therefore the brand had to deal with loss. Due to the negative effects that Lance Armstrong caused he was forced to pay back $10 million he received in bonus money from sponsors.

Another example of a scandal in the sport world is that of the notorious Tiger Woods. A couple of years ago Tiger’s cheating scandal was made public. It appeared that Woods had up to 14 mistresses and had to enter rehab for his sex addiction. Before the publication of the scandal, Woods was considered the greatest golfer of all time and had around $110 million in endorsements. But when the world found out that talented golf player had a sex addiction he lost endorsements with Nike, Gatorade, Gillette and Accenture. Till this very day, his career still has not fully recovered and he now earns about half of what he made

Wood’s sponsors think that when he starts to perform at a high level again he has an opportunity to regain the public’s trust. Even though the well-known golf player had his secrets during his career, he has unlike Lance Armstrong not done something that caused him to win the many tournaments. His problem had nothing to do with his sport life and therefore limited the effects on his pre-scandal sponsors.

This is an advertisement in which Tiger Woods was used to promote Nike. After the scandal this ad received a lot of criticism and comments on the slogan, since winning does not take care of the contempt of women and the loss of earning power of Nike.

Fact is that the companies that sponsor Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods and many other athletes that had unprofessional behavior were affected negatively often shown by the drop in the company’s stock value. However, the effect per company differs, since some companies were not affected much and many others had to use image repair activities to restore their brand image. After these scandals, companies will double-think when using an athlete as endorser but sponsors are needed in the sport industry to keep it going so athletes need to watch