The Less-Than-Reputable MLS Uniform Sponsors
Slowly but surely, David Beckham is showing why MLS shelled out the big bucks to bring him to the US. In the days after his signing was announced, the Galaxy announced they had sold 5,000 season tickets. And when the Los Angeles team announced on Friday that they had signed a five-year jersey sponsorship deal with “nutritional products” manufacturer Herbalife, the $3.5 to $5 million quoted was due, in no small part, to a certain Mr. Beckham sporting the company’s name.
Since MLS decided this season to allow its teams to sign jersey sponsorship deals, four teams have done so. In their bids to secure corporate sponsorship, a pattern has emerged. Whether by choice or necessity, several MLS teams have reached deals with companies whose products and marketing strategies are not the most reputable.
Real Salt Lake was the first team to announce a jersey sponsorship deal, when they signed with XanGo. XanGo paid an estimated $4 to $5 million dollars to have Jeff Cunningham and the rest of the RSL team promote their brand.
Dave Checketts gets hooked up with some mangosteen juice
This raises the question: what exactly is XanGo? Well, according to its website Xango is
A delicious dietary supplement, XanGo Juice harnesses the nutritional power of the whole mangosteen fruit through a potent proprietary formula. Just one to three ounces each day unleashes a concentrated rush of xanthones, a vigorous family of phytonutrients. The best part: sensational flavor that’ll keep you coming back for more and more.
What XanGo is still seems a bit murky (Mangosteen? Xanthones? Phytonutrients?). But it is not the first slightly sketchy drink to find itself emblazoned on an MLS jersey.
That honor goes to Red Bull, whose logo has been seen on the jerseys of the team of the same name since it was taken over by the Austrian beverage company. Wooed by Red Bull company head Dietrich Mateschitz’s billions, the league changed the name of the franchise formerly known as the MetroStars and allowed Mateschitz to put his logo on the team’s uniforms before other teams were permitted to sign such corporate sponsorship deals.
The 2006 New York Red Bulls
So, what is Red Bull? Well, the official website is a bit murky, claiming only that “All ingredients used for Red Bull Energy Drink are synthetically produced. Most ingredients are produced by pharmaceutical companies. This guarantees highest quality.” A bit vague.
Wikipedia clarifies a bit (though not much for those without advanced degrees in chemistry), claiming Red Bull contains “Water, sucrose, glucose, acidifier sodium citrates, carbon dioxide, taurine (0.4%), glucuronolactone (0.24%), caffeine (0.03%), inositol, vitamins (niacin, pantothenic acid, B6, B12), flavourings, and colours (caramel, riboflavin).”
So, highest quality synthetic ingredients such as taurine, glucuronolactone, inositol? Thanks, but I’ll pass.
New LA Galaxy sponsor Herbalife is also not quite mainstream. Though it markets itself as a “premier nutrition and weight-management company” with “life-changing products,” every product it sells carries the disclaimer “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”
Many of Herbalife’s products deal with weight control. One, called Snack Defense, claims to be
A scientific advancement in snacking control, Snack Defense … works all day to reduce the desire for sweets while it helps prevent the urge to snack between meals. Formulated with a blend of natural ingredients, including Gymnema sylvestre, a cutting-edge herb that targets the body’s response to sweets, plus chromium polynicotinate and Garcinia cambogia extract, Snack Defenseâ„¢ takes weight loss to a whole new level.
Gymnema sylvestre, chromium polynicotinate, Garcinia cambogia extract? Delicious!
(The one counterexample to MLS teams signing deals with producers of sketchy products is the expansion team Toronto FC. Their deal with the BMO, a bank, seems straightforward enough, even if Maurice Edu is a bit skeptical about their mascot.)
The ingredients of XanGo, Red Bull, and Herbalife products are enough to give me pause about those companies. But the sketchiness doesn’t end there.
All three companies have had their business practices questioned publicly. XanGo was issued a warning letter from the FDA telling the company to stop claiming health claims about its product, such as fighting depression, Parkinson’s disease and cancer. Red Bull was banned from being sold in Canada until 2005 and a CBC investigation headlined Raging Bull found that “two people have reported serious adverse health reactions after consuming the Red Bull energy drink.”
According to a 2000 article in Salon, since its founding in the 1980s, Herbalife has “courted its share of regulatory nightmares. Some health experts questioned the effectiveness of the company’s nutritional supplements; Herbalife claimed to increase energy and cure a range of illnesses from venereal disease to bee stings.” Other have criticized Herbalife for being a pyramid scheme (see Dan Loney’s in-depth discussion), though a wildly successful one that made founder Mark Hughes over $400 million dollars by the time of his 2000 death by overdose (ironically, by anti-depressant pills: wasn’t there an Herbalife cure for what ailed him?).
The companies whose logos will be on the chests of David Beckham and fellow MLS players this season are not quite mainstream. But, then again, neither is MLS. It is a ten year-old league struggling to succeed on the field and on the balance sheet. Real Salt Lake is about as well as known to the general public as is XanGo, so in that sense, the teams and the sponsors are at an equal level in their respective fields. But as a fan who hopes to see MLS become a long-term success, I can only hope that XanGo, Red Bull, and Herbalife will be on teams’ uniforms only until they can find more reputable sponsors.
March 28th, 2007 04:11
Speaking from afar, I can only agree with you. As much as we may not like the ethics or the ethos of those companies and their products, maybe we should cut the MLS some slack and allow them to get the revenue they need until such a time when they can demand a different type of sponsor.
March 28th, 2007 06:18
Chris - One parallel I’ve seen is with the rise of Internet gambling sponsors on European teams’ uniforms. I personally don’t have anything against these companies, but Fredi Kanoute does (he’s Muslim) and for a while threatened not to wear Sevilla’s uniforms with 888.com on the front. It was only when the Internet gambling company agreed to make a donation to a charity Kanoute supports that he finally relented.
March 29th, 2007 04:01
You’re actually spot-on there, David. This season in the Premiership has seen many more gambling companies sponsoring teams - 888.com (Middlesbrough); 32Red.com (Aston Villa); Bet24 (Blackburn); Mansion (Tottenham)…
Not the best example to be setting fans, particularly young ones. It just goes to prove that money talks, no matter who you are or where you play.
December 29th, 2007 05:07
Hello, This is Mary
I am 36 years old with 2 toddlers. My youngest just started day care last week- which still feels a little strange. I haven’t had this much time to myself in years. First thing I want to do is lose the extra pounds I put on during the last pregnancy. One of the girls next door has suggested I join her walking group two days a week. After my first pregnancy I lost around 35 pounds using the Herbalife products, but when I called the man that sold them to me three years ago he told me this week he doesn’t sell them anymore. He told me to look on the internet. It’s disappointing because he was really nice and he called me regularly to make sure I was using their products correctly. It was nice to have someone checking in with me every week to see how I was and it kept me motivated.
I searched on the internet for someone that sells Herbalife in New Jersey. I found many websites but I don’t want
just to buy the products, I want to find someone trustworthy that sells the products so I can also meet them and get started again.
Could anybody here recommend someone in New Brunswick?.
Thanks, Mary
January 4th, 2008 12:02
Red Bull’s actually pretty well known. Remember those commercials-”Red Bull gives you wings!” Plus seeing as how they own the team and are planning on naming the stadium after themselves to go with the team that they named after themselves, I don’t think that they’ll be shopping or sponsors anytime soon.
January 27th, 2008 08:19
Interesting that you consider XanGo not to be a reputable company.
Having won numerous awards such as Best Employer in State, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year, Focus on The Future Humanitarian Award and many, many more, I would contend that they are in fact an extremely reputable company.
Their product is well received and extremely popular, maning that they have already surpassed the first-five-year revenues of companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, Ebay, Dell and so on, having accumulated sales in excess of $1 billion (US) since they launched in 2002.
It seems you may have been ‘put off’ by their distribution method, which is commonly misunderstood in the ‘mainstream’ world of retail and advertising.
May I respectfully suggest that you dig a little deeper in your research before labelling something so casually as disreputable?
Great blog!
February 17th, 2008 15:18
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February 28th, 2008 02:03
A highly enjoyable entry, my friend.