UK Athletics Chair Warner Tells Sponsors To 'Forget What You Read In The Press'

The chair of UK Athletics lured sponsors to this year’s IAAF World Championships by telling them to "forget what you read in the press," and that people were not dissuaded from attending the event because of the allegations of drug taking that have besmirched the sport. UK Athletics Chair Ed Warner admitted it had been tough attracting sponsors to the championships in London amid a toxic atmosphere of doping allegations. "[IAAF President] Seb Coe sat here on this stage last year. He was talking about sponsors that were going to come through the IAAF, and not that many have in the last year," he said. "That to me is the acid test, because at global level, if the number of partners of the international federation has got diminished it does demonstrate it’s a hard sell." But Warner said that UK Athletics had managed to pull in a "great roster" of sponsors for this year’s event, including Müller and the Co-operative Group. Warner: "There was no guarantee a couple of years ago when the Russian doping stuff blew up that you would ever get that. We’ve had to work extremely hard to do that."

DRAWING A CROWD: Warner said that he attracted potential sponsors by telling them they had sold hundreds of thousands of tickets. He said he told sponsors, "Forget what you read in the press, people want to be there." A further complication in attracting sponsors is the heightened competition currently in the sponsorship market, Warner said. "The sponsorship market is hugely crowded," he said, citing competition from esports. "Many commercial partners no longer want to do the traditional billboards." Warner was speaking on a panel at the London Telegraph Business of Sport 2017 Conference with Olympic Medalist Daryll Neita and former Olympic athlete Goldie Sayers. Neita and Sayers argued that broadcasters should improve their coverage of track and field events during championships. Sayers said, "My slight bugbear is the lack of coverage of field events. It"s a very difficult sport to cover in terms of TV."
John Reynolds is a writer in London.