Exploring Sports Sponsorships in the UAE (featuring @Nawarico & Mahmood Shalan)

Exploring Sports Sponsorships in the United Arab Emirates through the journeys of two Emirati athletes, as well as looking through sports sponsorships abroad and how similar/different they are to sponsorships in the UAE.

Athletes that make it to world competitions and the Olympics are rarely born ‘gifted’. Some athletes begin practicing a sport at a young age and some grow the interest in a sport later in their lives. They rarely do it on their own; many join clubs or teams, and end up representing those teams in competitions in exchange of a coach, skill-training, physiotherapy, equipment, psychological training, sports camps, covering competition fees, and if they’re lucky, covering fees for participating in camps and competitions abroad. To have everything I have mentioned, however, is like a fairy tale for an athlete.

While many athletes competing locally and regionally struggle with accessing some or many of the aforementioned requirements for their sports careers, one can only imagine how difficult it is for those competing internationally to qualify for the Olympics. There are many athletes all over the globe going through this daily, continuous struggle of being recognized to receive the support needed.

This is where sports sponsorships fall into the picture. Sports sponsorship is a deal or an association between a company (the funder) and a club, team, or an individual athlete (the funded, and often, becomes the face of the company providing the funds).

Ideally, sports sponsorships provide a team or an individual athlete with extensive support, mostly financially, to support the athletes in winning medals and optimally to an athletic success. In return, the athletes have to be the advertising face for the sponsor, appearing in ads and wearing t-shirts with the company’s logo when competing, and so forth.

Sports sponsorships are very hard to land, especially in individual sports. Athletes in individual sports often find it harder to receive the sponsorship needed to progress in their respective sports, as sponsoring companies often seek sports that hold a high level of popularity among people, which are usually the traditional team sports like football and basketball. However, for athletes and sports to begin gaining popularity among people, it is important that they receive the publicity and advertising needed. In other words, the sponsorship needs popularity to occur and popularity (especially in individual sports) needs sponsorships to occur.

“You need to go around by yourself hunting for sponsorships,” says Noor AlHarmoodi. AlHarmoodi is a three-year, blue belt jujitsu player who is very passionate about her sport. AlHarmoodi shares her story as an athlete and the lack of available sponsorships throughout her athletic career.

She practiced jujitsu in the UAE for three months before moving to Boston, the United States, to pursue her masters’ degree. There, she joined a jujitsu academy to continue practicing and competing. Everything related to her sport was paid for by herself. This included competition fees, equipment, membership fees, and even gas to drive to competitions, sometimes as far as Canada.

Returning to the UAE, AlHarmoodi speaks on how she continued to fund herself following her graduation. Last year, she joined Al Wahda Club, where they sponsored her only in competitions of their choice. Every other participation and for practice in Dubai, AlHarmoodi had to fund it from her own pocket. Today, she practices jujitsu three to four hours a day, six days a week. Both training and nutrition are self-funded.

Mahmood Shalan, a 26-year-old CrossFit athlete, shares a similar story about sports sponsorships – but different in certain aspects. Shalan entered the field of sports through basketball, where he practiced with Al Ahli Club for seven years and even made it to the national team. His transition to CrossFit was that of practicing it as an accessory – to improve his agility, strength, and speed for basketball.

CrossFit, for Shalan, grew to be more than simply a supplement or accessory. Eventually, he ventured into the realm of fitness competitively and participated in a number of competitions, nationally and abroad, where he performed with consistency, yielding high results. Shalan describes CrossFit as “quite different” from Olympic sports such as AlHarmoodi’s jujitsu. In fact, it is even different in terms of its growth and current presence in the UAE. Unlike other sports, CrossFit gained its momentum and popularity in 2014-2015, whereas individual sports like jujitsu and fencing are at a gradual growth today, slowly expanding.

The pioneer behind the growth of CrossFit in 2014-15 was His Highness Sheikh Majid Bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who funded initiatives and competitions for CrossFit, most prominently, the initiative that started this growth: the 2012 Dubai Fitness Competition. “If it wasn’t for His Highness, I wouldn’t have approached this sport the way I did,” recounts Shalan. Shalan recalls stories where His Highness supported the Emirati CrossFit athletes in every aspect and when he would even call Shalan to check up on his practice and progress.

Government assistance and services were always supportive of athletes, Shalan says, but in regard to official sponsorships, he ended up having to fund himself as he continued the practice. In 2013, for example, Shalan received a sports sponsorship from a renowned private company that has been providing sponsorships for several Cross-Fitters in the region. However, that said sponsorship did not last a year, as they were not as invested as Shalan was and did not provide the sufficient support to reach the level of success he aspired for.

Both Shalan and AlHarmoodi reach a similar conclusion; that there are not enough sports sponsorship opportunities in the UAE – aside from football sponsorship. And when they existed – as in Shalan’s case in 2013- they were not necessarily up to par with the athletes’ needs and rigor of practice.

In a graph that describes global sports sponsorships by region from 2009 to 2018, North America is the highest spender in every year. In 2018, North America’s spending in sports sponsorships reached a peak of $24.2 billion (in US dollars), with Europe next at $17.6 billion. Central Asia spent $16.6 billion, and Central/South America spent $4.6 billion. All other countries, as listed in the graph, spent a total of $2.8 billion. This mere $2.8 billion includes all of the Middle East and Africa.

In countries with established athletes and Olympic teams, sponsorships are fixed, continuous and well-known. The United Kingdom, for example, has a database for sports sponsorships in the UK, where sponsors can easily find sports associations and clubs to reach out directly to them. In this database, sponsors can also post advertisements when searching for athletes.

With databases such as this one existing in addition to big, established sponsors (like Barclays in the United Kingdom and Prudential in the United States), it is clear to see that in such countries, sponsors are the ones who find the sponsored and not the other way around. In other words, sponsorships happen when sponsorship companies identify champions (or potential ones).

This makes finding athletes easy but receiving sponsorships in those countries rather difficult. “In the United States, you are basically a nobody if you are not in the big leagues,” recalls AlHarmoodi. AlHarmoodi mentions from her experience that it is actually easier to find sponsorships in the UAE than in a competitive country like the US.

The difference between a young country like the UAE and a highly competitive country like the US is that in the UAE, there isn’t a known list or number of entities that extend sponsorships to athletes. Instead, it is more of the athlete having to seek out – and sometimes even propose – those sponsorships.

For sponsorships to be more robust and supportive of their athletes, they need to be fixed within the country to create a competitive environment for athletes to thrive in. However, until that happens, athletes in the UAE have to navigate the difficult search. AlHarmoodi provides several tips for such a task.

“There are means. There are people who want to lend out their hand. You just have to prove yourself,” reassures AlHarmoodi when talking about sponsorships. Hard work and generating good results and progress are key.

Social media is also a powerful tool to seeking out sponsors. Many athletes, including figure skater Zahra Lari and weightlifter Amna Al-Haddad, use or used social media as a tool to advertise for themselves, their sports, and to seek our sponsorships to make it to the Olympics.

“Social media is a good method to voice your concerns, to put yourself out there, to gain as much coverage and as much media attention,” says AlHarmoodi.

Additionally, the jujitsu athlete encourages other athletes to speak to journalists, reach out to photographers, and communicate with sports agencies. The key to receiving the necessary spotlight to receive a sponsorship is to speak about your sport at every chance you receive.

Most importantly, AlHarmoodi emphasizes that an important aspect of an athletic career is patience and perseverance.

For sports sponsorships to grow in the UAE, athletes must continue to stand their ground. Athletes must continue to break barriers. Athletes must continue to set a culture of growth and competition. Athletes must continue to use the media, journalism and their voices to shed light on the necessity of sponsorships in order to achieve goals like winning a spot – and a medal – in the Olympics or other big competitions.

Resources:

• https://www.statista.com/statistics/196898/global-sponsorship-spending-by-region-since-2009/
• http://www.uksponsorship.com/spt1.htm
• https://home.barclays/who-we-are/sponsorship/
• https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2012/06/04/business-of-sports-7-big-sponsorships-by-prudentia/?slreturn=20190918041243