What’s beer gotta do with pharmacies on wheels?
Actually, nothing at all. Given the recent load of scandals involving many of the world’s most prestigious cyclists, sponsors have had to think hard whether they want to be associated with dopers on wheels. The Henninger beer brand is setting a long-awaited example by calling it quits.
Cycling has been the most consistently drug-soaked sport of the 20th century. As the cycling carnival plays across Europe each year, it is followed by stories about drug abuse. The German newsweekly Der Spiegel reported this April that so far 19 of the 22 Tour de France winners since 1960 have been “caught for or implicated in doping.”
Although the public has remained largely unimpressed – cynics that we have all become – sponsors, especially from the food and beverage industries, had to reconsider their involvement. A healthy brand image and a sport corrupted by drugs do not go together very well.
At the end of August, the Frankfurt beer brand Henninger, owned by Germany’s leading brewer Radeberger Group, announced that it would refocus its sponsoring activities as of 2009. Read: Henninger will stop supporting the cycling race “Rund um den Henninger Turm”. The race even bears its name because it is conduced in an area of Frankfurt where there used to be Henninger Brewery, whose famous landmark is the Henninger Turm (tower). The race also happens to be Germany’s most prestigious and traditional cycling tournament. It was first raced 45 years ago.
Obviously, Henninger’s decision is portentous far beyond its ostensible message. That’s why Radeberger’s executives have tried to play it down by calling it “no decision against cycling as such”.
Radeberger Group is now planning to use the money (a seven figure Euro sum, you bet) to host a beer festival in Fraqnkfurt, where they hope to promote all of the beer brands brewed there, such as Henninger, Binding, Schöfferhofer and Clausthaler.
Henninger Brewery and Binding Brewery used to be neighbours in Frankfurt until Henninger Brewery was sold to a property developer and Binding, now Radeberger Group, took over the brand.
Another sponsor, far more important than Henninger, has been Gerolsteiner, a big selling mineral water brand in Germany. Many market observers have been wondering why Gerolsteiner was still supporting cycling although the “rolling pharmacy” image of cyclists could hardly prove beneficial to the brand. On 4 September, Gerolsteiner, one of the major sponsors of cycling with its own team, announced that it will discontinue its sponsorship next year, however, without giving any reasons for its decision. Gerolsteiner has been actively supporting professional cycling since 1998. Experts estimate that each year the company, which is partly owned by Germany’s Bitburger Brewery, invested EUR 9 million in cycling.
