Australia’s professional netballers – yes, there is such a thing – have taken “Get Woke, Go Broke” to a whole new level. In the face of yet another virtue-signalling tanty from an over-privileged class whose only discernable talent is tossing a ball around, mining magnate Gina Rinehart has had enough – she’s taken her $15m and walked.
Guess who’s going to go broke first.
Netball Australia is in financial peril and facing a potential $25m sponsorship crisis after a player union revolt led to Hancock Prospecting walking away from the sport, with the possibility more key sponsors could follow.
When you’re a professional playing a sport almost no one watches, one would think you’d be grateful for every penny of sponsorship, but that’s not reckoning with the dunderheaded wokeness of the modern athlete.
And what’s all the fuss? Something that some dead bloke said half a century ago. Rinehart’s old man, Lang Hancock, was indisputably a racist – but Rinehart has never echoed her father’s views, and is known for extensive, if quiet, philanthropy. Including Aboriginal charities, including Indigenous children’s charity, Madalah.
In spite of the negative headlines, Madalah’s experience has been that Mrs Rinehart is a kind and generous person who genuinely cares about Madalah and its Indigenous students.
National Indigenous Times
But, like Soviet commissars sniffing out “kulaks”, or SS Obergruppenführers scrutinising a family tree, the woke left viciously visit the sins of the fathers on their children.
When the sport’s sole Aboriginal player objected to wearing their sponsor’s logo, the rest rushed, clucking and squawking, to bend the knee.
Rinehart understandably told them to get stuffed: no logo, no sponsorship.
The company of mining billionaire Gina Rinehart pulled its $15m sponsorship on Saturday and there are fears it could balloon to a greater financial loss for the sport, as current and future sponsors may be put off from backing netball due to the players’ stance on issues.
“It could potentially turn into a $25m problem in the near future,” said one netball source. Netball Australia chief executive Kelly Ryan confirmed to The Australian that the survival of the sport, which has been $4m in the red, was again on tenterhooks and they will now have to consider cost cutting.
The Australian
Cutting the salary of every player who boycotted the sponsor’s logo would be an obvious start.
Where Rinehart has led, other sponsors are threatening to follow.
Mining billionaire Gina Rinehart’s dramatic decision on the weekend to pull out of her $15m sponsorship of netball – following public stands taken by the national netball team about her – has already led to some of the major sponsors of sport in Australia to re-evaluate their involvement, Diary has learnt.
And it’s fair to say that key sponsors of sport were taking note of the deluge of comments strongly in favour of Rinehart, and scathing of the decision of the likes of the netballers and Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins in recent weeks to, in the readers’ own words, ‘bite the hand that feeds them’.
The Australian
It may come as a shock to indulged sportspeople, but there’s not exactly a lot of “virtuous” sponsorship money washing around.
[A] betting company executive said that outside of gambling, alcohol and energy, sponsorship pickings were slim for sports.
“If they’re lucky, a bank or a telecommunications company could get involved. That’s basically it,” he says. “The car industry is pretty much dead. Toyota and Kia are pretty much the only ones that sponsor things these days. It’s a very shallow pool. Players have to accept that.”
Maybe they ought to go begging to Greenpeace or Extinction Rebellion.
In the meantime, a great many Australians are giving Rinehart a great big thumbs-up for taking on over-privileged paid athletes.
Australians have clearly had a gutful of overpaid but under-informed sportspeople who think their personal opinions on matters outside their areas of expertise are worth inflicting on sport…
There is no doubt politics and sport cannot be completely divorced but it is tiresome to watch everything from netball to footy being subjected to, and damaged by, zealotry from undergraduate political activists dressed in green and gold.
It has now come to pass that every two-bob political opinion from every minor sport star not only deserves to be aired but indulged. Hypocrisy is no barrier. Jetsetting ex-footballers whose carbon footprint is surely only just less than Al Gore’s think they are entitled to chide Woodside for keeping the lights on in Western Australia and employing so many of their fellow West Australians […]
No wonder so many Australians might be thrilled that Rinehart called their bluff.
The Australian
A great many professional athletes might want to pause to consider how much they owe Rinehart. Rinehart has poured millions into sport, particularly fringe women’s sports that would otherwise struggle to rub two cents together: volleyball and synchronised swimming, for instance. But her biggest contribution to Australian sport has undoubtedly been swimming. As Tokyo Olympics triple-medallist Cate Campbell rightly noted, “I don’t say this lightly, but Gina Rinehart saved swimming.”
Yeah, but her dad said something mean, half a century ago.