The 21st century has been a good for sports business so far, if you disregard Russia’s recent crackdown on human rights, or the fact that it used the Sochi Olympics as a propaganda vehicle and that it invaded the Ukraine immediately after the conclusion of its not-so-fun games.

Arthur Solomon Arthur Solomon
Or, if you see nothing wrong with holding the Olympics in a country that subjects athletes and visitors to substandard health conditions, like Rio.

Or, if you’re so enamored with football that life-altering concussions and spousal abuse in the National Football League are accepted as merely the cost of doing business.

Or, if you think the NFL was correct in making a cause célèbre about a slightly deflated football, while routinely making excuses and using the “everyone deserves a second chance” rationalization for permitting players known to have committed domestic violence because teams needs those players to win.

Or, if you don’t see anything wrong with Major League Baseball using thug-like tactics to get A-Rod for using performance-enhancing drugs, while giving “stand in the corner” punishments to other users.

Or, if you don’t see anything wrong when it was revealed that USA Gymnastics failed to notify law officials about complaints of sexual misconduct by young gymnasts against coaches.

History has shown that if you’re a sponsor of sports, you wear blinders and don’t see anything wrong. And if you do, you keep it to yourself.

Big business is famous for its propaganda-like statements regarding sports sponsorships that have no bearing on reality, especially when those statements are tied to the Olympics, whose “we’re supporting our athletes” declarations camouflages the real reason these companies are spending millions of dollars on athletic events: massive product sales.

The NFL and Olympics sponsors share a commonality in spending billions on the big business of sports: They’re helping to perpetuate the worst aspects of sports by not demanding that the ruling bodies of the sports cabals clean up their acts.

I’m not referring to the ludicrous public relations stunts of MLB to rid its game of steroid users or the NFL quest to seek counsel from female experts regarding its player’s abuse incidents. Did the NFL have to hire women to make NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and team owners know that slugging a woman was wrong? No, all they had to do was ask their wives and daughters. Or maybe they used the same disingenuous reasoning that for decades had them ignoring concussions in the hopes that no one would notice that they occur.

Need recent evidence about the hypocrisy of the NFL and its team owners? Earlier this season, the New York Giants signed kicker Josh Brown despite knowing his spousal abuse history. The Giants released him only after additional information about the abuse became public. The team’s apology for originally signing him is as worthless as a missed field goal attempt.

Of course, sports have always been a magnet for brands that are now considered detrimental or unhealthy. Both tobacco and alcoholic products were once frequent sponsors of sporting events, and even today alcoholic beverages and sports are still tied together at the umbilical cord. And now fantasy sports gambling has joined the list.

It was only since the audience reach of television that brands spent billions supporting the IOC and the NFL, regardless of the Machiavellian and less-than-sportsmanlike conduct of those organizations. This situation will not change unless sponsors do more than just make meaningless PR statements and put their advertising dollars into other activities. Until that happens — and it did happen to prize fighting — don’t expect to see sportsmanship in these sports.

For years, the leagues were prime vehicles for beer companies, non-alcoholic beverages and snack foods to position their brands as nutritional and fun products, in spite of medical research to the contrary. Only government regulations prevent the leagues from approving tobacco products for sponsorships, as they did for years prior to the ban.

During my sports reporting days as a journalist and during my PR sports marketing career, sports have been promoted as if it’s all milk and honey. That would be nice, if true. But the many actions of athletes, team owners, leagues, coaches and governments disprove that depiction of sports.

The hypocrisy of the image sports tries to portray was unveiled by the New York Times, whose reporting revealed that MLB, the NFL and NBA and its team owners have official relationships with the unregulated gambling of online fantasy sites. The Wall Street Journal has delegated its coverage of the fantasy site industry to its business section, which makes sense, because betting isn’t a sport.

Even though the leagues vociferously proclaim they’re against betting, they’ve always encouraged it: in baseball by announcing starting pitchers ahead of games, and in football by making public injuries to players, which, of course, enables odds makers to set the line.

Reality shows that sports isn’t and never was what athletic cabals, marketers, PR and ad agencies portray it as: an integral element of society that brings out the best in people. In addition to excusing domestic violence, denying the facts about concussions and anti-social acts by players, sports sponsors also kept quiet when it was revealed that the NFL’s patriotic image was just another paid for marketing ploy, enhanced by more than $700,000 payments from the military. Better that instead of wrapping itself around the American flag, the NFL should show their appreciation to the military by hiring veterans.

As the year neared a close, early season NFL TV ratings showed a decline in viewers. Maybe at last, the decades-long hypocrisy of the NFL regarding domestic violence, concussions, the anti-social acts of its players and the lame responses of team owners and the commissioner has contributed to the decline.

The beer industry has no choice but to stand with the league. Other sponsors do too. If TV viewers’ decline was more than just a blip caused by the election, stay tuned. There are venues other than the grid iron available for sponsors.

Big sports couldn’t disseminate its propaganda without its enablers: The advertising industry, the media, and sponsors and, of course, our public relations business. There is more than enough shame to be shared by all.

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Arthur Solomon was a Senior VP at
Burson-Marsteller. He now is a contributor to public relations and sports business publications, consults on PR projects and is on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at [email protected].