No right answer

As I mentioned last month, I’ve been working with SRAM this year on The Road Diaries, a new website with behind-the-scenes blogs and features with their athletes like Levi Leipheimer, Chris Horner, and more. We went live a couple days before the Tour, where SRAM had Saunier Duval-Scott and Agritubel in the race. No Astana unfortunately, but we won’t go into that. Anyways, the boys got off to a great start. Agritubel’s Romain Feillu taking the yellow jersey for a day, then Saunier Duval broke off three stage wins from Riccardo Ricco and Leonardo Piepoli. We all know what happened next.

SRAM’s response was to be open about what had happened, so all our blog posts and Flickr photos stayed up. Global Marketing Manager David Zimberoff posted a candid statment on The Road Diaries to the effect of:

“We’re disappointed. We’re pissed off. Until further notice, we’re suspending our support of this team. This investment has been lost, but that won’t change our commitment to the other teams we sponsor and cycling in general.”

The discussion among commenters on the blog showed how complicated the choice that sponsors face really is. I’ll go through the two main points of contention:

“Nothing hurts more than voting with your wallet.” – Bill
“Penalizing the rest of the team seems unfairly punitive to folks who are most likely innocent.” – Ben

There seems be a consensus that internal team anti-doping programs have been effective at preventing doping and attracting sponsors. It was likely no coincidence that the three teams with the most prominent campaigns – Garmin, Columbia, and CSC-Saxo Bank – signed major new deals this spring. But their programs are beyond the means of smaller budgets like Saunier Duval-Scott’s. So if sponsors “vote with their wallets,” internal testing will be even harder for the have-nots to afford.

On the other hand, if every sponsor stuck with every team whenever an individual rider got busted, team managers would have a financial incentive to “see no evil, hear no evil” about doping in their ranks. They’d save money by not testing internally and they’d benefit from the results of dirty riders with no risk to the team’s income. We can hope that the managers would do the ethical thing, but people don’t always do that. So maybe it’s best to hold management accountable for the people who work for them, like in any other business.

“pull out of sponsorship and while your at it stop making cycling products, no one will want to buy them now that you show how unsuppportive of cycling you are” – phil
“I agree 100% with not supporting teams who disgrace themselves, the Sram brand and the sport .” – Chris

The sponsor’s choice is to stick with or walk away from the team as a whole. There is no middle ground, which makes a case like Ricco’s – where there’s no indication of systematic doping within the team – all the more difficult. Dropping the sponsorship is a clear statement against the cheater, but you can’t avoid some people interpreting it as a lack of confidence in the movement towards a clean sport. Continuing with the team avoids that portrayal, but it will always look to some like a gesture of leniency.

While the first is a debate of incentives, this one is more emotional. At its heart, it’s a question of loyalty to the community of people who love cycling. When a sponsor cuts ties with a team, is that a statement against individuals who violated the basic tenets of the community? Or is it a statement against the community itself? It’s difficult to separate the two.

In a situation like this one, each sponsor is in a unique situation and the choice is always about more than public perception. Internal politics, relationships with customers and suppliers, contractual obligations, and plenty of other factors influence the final decision. Regardless, there’s no outcome for Saunier Duval, Scott USA, and SRAM that’s beyond criticism. I try hard not to use quotes from famous people, but there’s one from Bill Cosby that I think is appropriate.

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”