{"id":28322,"date":"2012-11-20T07:52:24","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T12:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=28322"},"modified":"2012-11-20T07:53:38","modified_gmt":"2012-11-20T12:53:38","slug":"adidas-cuts-sponsorship-ties-with-the-bahamas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2012\/11\/adidas-cuts-sponsorship-ties-with-the-bahamas","title":{"rendered":"Adidas Cuts Sponsorship Ties With The Bahamas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One of the leading sporting brands in the world has decided to sever all ties with The Bahamas, pulling the plug on the sponsorship awarded to the country.<\/p>\n

The decision by the mega company Adidas, not to renew the contract with The Bahamas will have a tremendous impact on the local sporting community. Millions of dollars will be lost as a result and the direct sponsorship to some athletes on subvention, through the recommendation of the Bahamas Olympic Committee (BOC), might be in jeopardy. The four-year contract agreement will come to an end on December 31, 2012. It was said that Adidas will not reconsider renewing the agreement or extending it, leaving The Bahamas open and free to negotiate with other sporting labels. The Bahamas will not be able to start the negotiation process until next year.<\/p>\n

For years now, Bahamian athletes have sported Adidas uniforms while competing at international, regional and local arenas. Brandishing the three stripes, which is the signature look for Adidas, brought uniformity and made The Bahamas stand out with unique and bright colors.<\/p>\n

In this Guardian Sports exclusive, BOC General Secretary Romel \u2018Fish\u2019 Knowles explains the process, the financial effects and the impact to sports, as well as how The Bahamas will move on.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst off all, I want to thank the team at Adidas for the great relationship that we have had in The Bahamas over the past four years and our relationship prior to that,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have been good suppliers of uniforms and subventions towards the Olympic Committee and sports in The Bahamas. The decision was reached by Adidas. They were having a lot of issues with their branding. A lot of national federations had an issue with the stripes on their uniforms, as you know that is the Adidas signature. As a result of that, Adidas has made a decision not to renew most of their contracts within the Caribbean and around the world because of the issue with their branding. You can identify Adidas very quickly because of the stripes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is an issue with national federations, and an issue with a lot of the multi-sport games. I guess it became very frustrating and they were not prepared to change their brand. They made a decision to move onto other sports and to form partnership with other sports to promote their brands. Financially it will hurt us. The financial lost is obviously a concern for us. We will be losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in uniforms alone. They also assist with subventing some of our athletes. The sponsorship was vital and we appreciated everything that they have done for The Bahamas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing is the rapport that we have had with Adidas. They have been very accommodating thus far with all of our requests and uniforms. The Bahamas uniforms are one of the most brands in the world. Everyone wanted a piece or a part of the uniform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knowles added that other sporting suppliers are interested in investing into Bahamian sports, but noted that the process of negotiation has not started as yet. When the contract is up, tenders will be invited to bid on The Bahamas Olympic Committee.<\/p>\n

Knowles said: \u201cI am sure once we start the process, that there will be persons willing to pick up the slack when our contract ends with Adidas officially.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bahamas signed the contract agreement with Adidas in 2008, just before the
\nBeijing Olympic Games. The Adidas uniform outfitted Bahamian athletes competing in track and field, swimming, boxing, basketball and volleyball.<\/p>\n

Knowles noted that there were some issues with some of the other core sports, such as cycling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were able to share with sports that were not on the program for their national teams such as softball, powerlifting and the likes,\u201d added Knowles. \u201cObviously Adidas didn\u2019t make all of the uniforms that we needed or our membership. They provided some stuff but it couldn\u2019t be made in The Bahamas\u2019 colors. The numbers , especially in cycling, were so small and it would be a lost venture for them. We just need to look for a supplier who will cater to the majority of our sports and instances where they don\u2019t make the uniforms, we strike an agreement to assist with having stuff that will accommodate us with our national teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adidas is the sponsor for several of our national team athletes inclusive of Chris Brown, Debbie Ferguson- McKenzie, Ramon Miller, Derrick Atkins and Andretti Bain.<\/p>\n

By Kelsie Johnson <\/span><\/em>
\nGuardian Sports Reporter<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the leading sporting brands in the world has decided to sever all ties with The Bahamas, pulling the plug on the sponsorship awarded to the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[413],"class_list":["post-28322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-olympics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}