Can Scottish Top Flight Sides Do More To Promote Charities?

Date: 1st August 2018

A while back, I mentioned how proud I am that Scottish teams have started to embrace charity and the local community more and more.

Yet Motherwell and Hearts have made me think that all Scottish Premiership clubs should do more to promote charities.

Hearts for the last three seasons have had the charity ‘Save The Children’ on their shirts instead of a conventional shirt sponsor. The Jambos announced earlier in summer that the successful partnership will be extended by another three years.

In the last month, Motherwell stated that they’d put a ‘Suicide Prevention North Lanarkshire’ message on the back of their jersey next season. Suicide has been a real problem for those in the North Lanarkshire in recent years and it’s great that the club along with Airdrie, Clyde and Albion Rovers have joined forces with their local council to try and get people to talk about such a tough subject and seek help if they need it.

Now the only thing that taints The Well’s message on the back of their strip is the fact that they have a betting company as their main sponsor and have two alcohol related sponsors. It may send mixed messages.

Now the main reason for this is simple, it’s because those companies have the money and are willing to invest in football clubs. Motherwell are certainly in the norm when it comes to those types of sponsors, just look at all our main competitions and the major sides in Scotland!

Hopefully if we can show more about the social benefits you get from football more socially aware companies will come up with better offers of sponsorship.

In that vein, I believe that every Scottish Premiership side should endorse a charity, even if it’s their own foundation, and have that endorsement represented somewhere on their kit.

Obviously the front of the strip is the big one, I can understand why teams won’t want to give that space away without payment but these days we have various other options available to us.

You could place them on the back or have their logos on the player’s shorts.

In the English Premier League, they’ve introduced us to the phenomenon of having sleeve sponsors. You could easily have a charity message or logo on the player’s upper arm.

It’s a sponsor that can go on every kit, whether it be for adults or kids.

I really hope all of our sides can see that we need to do even more to promote good causes and try and bring new messages onto our strips and not just making a quick buck off of betting companies or breweries.

I just think the whole community could benefit from having more positive sponsors on our top clubs kits.

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