Sweet Science rids itselfs of “Sponsors”
As of the first of the year, Sweet Science fighters will no longer brandish the logos of any organizations, companies, or corporations other than ours. Our “Sponsors” (with the exception of Buckeye Nissan) never understood exactly what it meant to be a Sponsor. The owner of one company wanted Personal Training for he and his wife, also giving his employees access to the gym, our athletes wore his company logo on our trunks, banners displayed in gym, featured his company on our website, and to cap it off wanted exclusive rights to profit from any shows or events we would have in the future by providing certain services we would need. This gentlemen expected all of this in exchange for an amount of money I would be too embarrassed to disclose. Another “Sponsor” convinced us to put on an event that they would financially “take care of” and when the dust settled our amateur program (quickly becoming the best in the country) was left hanging, forced to absorb the brunt of a few thousand dollar loss to say the least. What started out as a “Charity event” ultimately became a business venture for said “sponsor” as the language they used went from them making a philanthropic contribution to them complaining about all of the “losses” they had incurred? And, as we stated you cannot lose what you were never suppose to gain! What we do at Sweet Science Boxing is completely and solely centered around the children of the community. The very fact is most people are more than willing to impart with their money with no strings attached as long as it goes to kids with cancer or some other unfortunate circumstance but when it comes to kids doing positive things like winning National Championships as our kids do, then the well becomes dry or were suppose to sing and dance for lack of better words when having your name attached to our internationally known, World class program should be enough. The companies we dealt with advertise, but they’re only known locally through crappy newspaper advertisements. Keep in mind, that’s a far cry from having your company logo on the trunks of a Professional boxer featured in the Associated Press (AP) which the whole world gets to see or HBO World Title Undercard appearances for that matter. The proceeds from our Professional bouts largely fund our amateur program and keep us afloat so to speak. There has long been a misconception that the strength of our organization was built or based off the sponsorships on behalf of rich, or powerful companies but this could not be further from the truth. The only company we dealt with that truly seemed to understand the meaning of the word Sponsorship was Buckeye Nissan (they cut us a check and wished us well) and we continue to have a stellar relationship with them to this day. But allow us to impart a little advice to anyone looking to be a sponsor or looking for a sponsor, make sure both parties truly understand the definition of the word Sponsor and remember right makes might, not might makes right!
Definition on Dictionary.com : http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Sponsor
-Staff
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