Rabobank pull out of cycling

According to the BBC,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/mobile/cycling/20001685

This could be an opportunity for the Pro 12 clubs to renegotiate the Rabo sponsorship as there's an extra 12million suddenly floating about in that Budget. Interesting.

The point that should be considered if whether RaboBank who were in up to the necks complicit in their avocation and complicity in and of drugs cheating (a seventeen-year sponsorship) in cycling should be a sponsor not to be courted but told to eff off.

Rabobank doesn't need to renegotiate, they signed a deal for four seasons.

The clubs could offer them an extension but it's difficult to see how they would be able to argue for a significant uplift when the last contract went through less than a year and a half ago.

Can't as for more, and its to early to think of an extension, however it goes Give Rabo more funds to promote the League and hence thier brandname along with it

why would Rabobank wish to renegotiate an existing contract in order to pay out more money just because they have additional funds now?

why would they fill a hole in their marketing budget which was primarily aimed at promoting the brand to their home market (and that of continental europe) through a sport which is very popular in that region (cycling), by using a sport which has little or no commercial coverage/worth in the region (pro 12 rugby). They are more likely to use it to sponsor a dutch football team or the local clog traders annual exhibition.

"British rider David Millar, who served a two-year suspension from 2004 for doping, criticised Rabobank on Twitter for making the decision now given the past cases. He wrote: "How dare you walk away from your young clean guys who are part of the solution. Sickening."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/20001685

And justified sinner wants to get leverage out of a sponsor backing out of a team that it was in up to the armpits in drugs scandal.

Waftily walking away from the crime scene and expressing words of faux disappointment won't wash.

With them being Dutch you would wonder if they would do a personal sponser of Visser.

The celts could look to see if they wanted to support a Rabo A team cup in place of the B&I cup.

There are very few 'clean' sponsors in sport of any kind. If there is a major business wishing to invest in sport then there is a responsibility on the administrators of that sport to maximise the financial input. If circumstances change then you should always reconsider your current position.

Team Rabobank tolerated the use of doping up until at least 2007, according to a Dutch newspaper. The riders could select their own products, but the team medical staff made sure that they did not hurt their health, the Volkskrant newspaper claimed. At least three former riders, including Michael Boogerd, were also said to have been involved in the HumanPlasma blood doping ring, as well.

Sponsor Rabobank said that it would not investigate the story, saying that there had been an investigation earlier. “Since 2007 there is a new board of directors and new leadership,” a spokesman said. He also pointed out, “We want to stress that within the team there is a zero tolerance policy.”

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/rabobank-tolerated-doping-on-cycling-team-de-rooy-claims

[quote]The announcement Friday signaled the end of Rabobank's sponsoring of the biggest professional cycling team in the bike-crazy Netherlands, but the team manager said the bank would continue to support its riders as they seek a new sponsor.

"We hope and expect the UCI will work with us to let the team to keep its license," Harold Knebel told national broadcaster NOS. "We hope the team can stay together."

The decision came a day after the Rabobank team confirmed that the International Cycling Union had launched a doping case against one of its riders, Carlos Barredo.

The UCI said it understood Rabobank's decision "in light of the difficult period, namely the high public interest in past doping issues and perhaps a more recent action taken by the UCI against a rider of the team."

http://espn.go.com/olympics/cycling/story/_/id/8523291/dutch-bank-rabobank-drops-cycling-sponsorship

The Rabobank contract was signed through RaboDirect, rather than the parent company. For the Dutch company, RaboDirect is all about Ireland.

Maybe Rabo will now play not such a non-speaking role in the future of European competition debate.

Maybe they'll say................. "Hmmm, just to let you all know that we're in the market for naming rights to this here new version of the European Competition whenever you all get around to coming to a decision."

The Rabobank Cup?

SecretFly wrote:Maybe Rabo will now play not such a non-speaking role in the future of European competition debate.

Maybe they'll say................. "Hmmm, just to let you all know that we're in the market for naming rights to this here new version of the European Competition whenever you all get around to coming to a decision."

The Rabobank Cup?

Or Perhaps with all the bickering thats going on at the moment between PRL and ERC with short-term monetary gain at the expense of the long-term future of the sport at stake "The Wonga.com Cup" would be more appropriate?

Yeah... that'd be another goer.

Could always see if the top couple of teams wanted to join from the Top14.
Then maybe see if Heineken would become main sponsor.

That reminds me of an article I saw a few weeks back. Rabobank are happy with how things are going.

Munster fan Moriarty gets immediate result

It comes as no surprise that a marketing executive should have a positive outlook about the future but a year into its sponsorship of Celtic League rugby, RaboDirect’s Maeve Moriarty has proof her company’s association is already reaping dividends.
The sponsorship and programmes manager for RaboDirect, Moriarty came to the savings bank in the summer of 2011 to handle its then new deal with Celtic Rugby. With the ink still drying on the four-year contract to succeed Magners as title sponsor of the 12-team league and the new season less than two months ahead, she recalls a hectic first season, not least because the name RaboDirect Pro12 proved such a mouthful for the people expected to push the league’s new moniker.

It took quite a while to sit comfortably on the tongues of players and coaches required to talk about the competition at press conferences and media calls and also involved some concessions on the part of the sponsors to ensure their move into rugby would not fail to get off the ground.

"We’re a very committed sponsor and a lot of the work we did last year, strategically, was to get in behind, supporting the RaboDirect Pro12 name change," Moriarty told the Irish Examiner.

"I think most of our marketing spend in the first seven months of last season, you probably wouldn’t have seen much of RaboDirect. We put everything we could into supporting the mark, the RaboDirect Pro12, because we knew if that didn’t bed in after six or seven months it was never going to.

"In sport people are directed as to what to say, like calling it the RBS 6 Nations, the Qantas Wallabies etc. The RaboDirect Pro12 is a mouthful so I talked to the [bank’s] GM at the time and I said, ‘why don’t we make it easier for everybody and start working on The Rabo?’

"He said ‘absolutely fine’, which was a huge surprise because things can be very structured when dealing with commercial rights or whatever. But we went and talked to the clubs and we said we know this can be difficult at times and it doesn’t always roll off the tongue so if it’s easier to call it The Rabo then off you go. They were surprised and really supportive. So that was worthwhile for us."

Asked if sponsorship is delivering as a platform for RaboDirect, Moriarty is unequivocal and cites a comparison from her previous life in Australia.

"This is a good deal for everyone," she said. "Yeah, it has way exceeded our expectations, not that those expectations were framed up necessarily in the first few months. We were happy to get the name in place first. We did some research in March this year with what we call rugby addicts, the hard-core rugby fans in the community, through Onside Sponsorship, and we were sitting at 93% unprompted awareness of the name of the competition after seven months. That’s a result I’ve never seen before in my years in sport.

"When Qantas took over the Wallabies’ sponsorship from Vodafone about 10 years ago it would have taken them maybe three or four years to get traction from that name change and even then it’s used in the press but it doesn’t roll off the tongue and it’s easily dropped.

"We were lucky in some respects that last season was a bit of a perfect storm but we adapted as we went along and now we’ve ended up in a competition everyone refers to as The Rabo, which we’re really happy about."

It is possible those initial name difficulties actually helped hone the brand.

"You know what, I didn’t think about that but you’re right. Out of adversity or difficulty come some of the best solutions. We made a decision quickly, we moved on it and solved the situation."

And, with the flagship game in the schedule set to play out at the Aviva Stadium tonight, all the signs so far this season are that year two of the sponsorship is set to move both the brand and the league on even further.

"One of the joys that I have is being able to say that the opening rounds of this season so far, every one of them has had the most spectacular of matches. So, normally, leading into it, [Leinster v Munster] would be the big game, and there’s no doubt it is, but, oh my God, the season so far has been phenomenal.

"You couldn’t have asked for a better lead-in to this match and being a proud Munster supporter I’ve got my hand on my heart but you just couldn’t pick it."

The Dutch bank's decision follows a United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) report which concluded that Armstrong engaged in "serial cheating".

"We are no longer convinced that the international professional world of cycling can make this a clean and fair sport," said Rabobank's Bert Bruggink.

Not convinced cycling will ever be clean? Really? Shock. Welcome to the world boys. Everyone involved with sport - at least in a medical context - have known about cycling for a long, long time. I wouldn't sponsor a pro cyclist to clean a public toilet or recycling centre.