Perhaps the greatest shock following weekend revelations that former FIFA vice-president Mohamed bin Hammam had allegedly paid FIFA officials millions of dollars to help secure the 2022 World Cup for Qatar was that some people were shocked.

A litany of back-handers, bribes and lavish junkets merely confirmed that many senior officials involved in the management and administration of international football are little more than crooks.

They inhabit a squalid, grubby place occupied by sharp-suited chancers and the overbearing stench of corruption where any significant progress is determined by a willingness to grease palms rather than playing fair – England’s Achilles heel in their bid to land the 2018 World Cup.

If, as alleged, Qatar has successfully bought the World Cup, what can it hope to achieve?

Geography and demographics mitigate against the development of a powerful football infrastructure in a country with a land mass no greater than Yorkshire. Instead, it appears that those involved in the seedy process of landing the world’s largest sporting event have been intent on creating a platform for the ultimate display of one-upmanship.

Securing the 2022 World Cup enabled Qatar to cock a snook at their envious neighbours in the knowledge that none of them have a chance of hosting football’s greatest competition for at least half a century.

Only the most naively optimistic would expect anything other than the usual blandishments and mild censure when FIFA’s Congress meets in Sao Paulo next Monday.

Even if it was contemplating re-running the vote to host the 2022 (and 2018) World Cups, legally, football’s world governing body doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Moreover, the more time it wastes waiting for “concrete evidence” of wrong-doing, the less likely a fresh vote becomes.

Privately, at least two of FIFA’s largest sponsors have been unhappy with the World Cup selection process (one calls it ‘embarrassing’) for more than a decade.

When deep-pocketed sponsors become concerned that their brand image is becoming tarnished by association, or the cost of their continued support is getting too high, it’s not long before lawyers begin porting over dusty contractual clauses capable of enabling them to sever their commercial connections.

Should one of the World Cup’s largest sponsors announce that it’s unlikely to renew its lucrative contract, a number of others could follow suit.

Closer to home, Barclays now appears almost certain to end its £40 million-a-year sponsorship of the Premier League when the bank’s present deal finishes at the end of the 2015-16 season. Commercial considerations, not allegations of wholesale corruption, have prompted the decision.

Barclays has sponsored the Premier League since 2001, since when the cost has soared. The bank’s current contract, which started in 2012, is almost 50 percent higher than the previous deal which ran between 2008-12 at an annual cost of £20.5 million. BT Sport’s recent entry to the domestic football fray has driven up the value of sports rights and Barclays is concerned about a possible inflationary knock-on effect.

It’s worth noting that in addition to handing over a cheque for £40 million to the Premier League, Barclays spends at least half as much again in ‘activation costs’ such as television commercials to promote their deal.

The bank has already announced its commitment to increasing the return on capital employed to ensure it is both higher than the cost of capital and maintains Barclays’ Core Tier 1 capital above 10.5 percent. According to sources at the bank this week, ‘glamour projects’ such as Premier League sponsorship, will now be jettisoned in favour of more effective projects.

While it goes without saying that a commercial connection with sport can help raise a company’s profile, both the return on investment and the nature of the company’s involvement is critical to a sport sponsorship’s longer-term success.

Directors and managers of Toolstation, the rapidly-expanding building accessories and home improvement business, appreciate both sport’s timeless appeal as well as the need to see their sporting investments working – both for sponsor and recipient.

Their approach proves that companies do not have to spend millions searching for goodwill; that comes as a result of doing things properly and participating directly with the organisations they’re sponsoring.

“We’re sports fans ourselves,” says John Meaden, the company’s affable head of marketing, “and while we have been introduced to a variety of sport sponsorship opportunities over the years, we believe in retaining a human scale to our involvement.”

As a growing company, Toolstation provide a well-designed template for other commercial organisations wishing to get involved in sport.

The company’s principle sporting focus is on grassroots football. It sponsors both the Western League and the Northern Counties East League, an arrangement which Mr Meaden believes “generates enormous goodwill and offers great value.” The company’s money does not get diverted away from where it’s intended, nor hosed directly into a players’ bank accounts.

“We know our financial involvement makes a difference,” says Mr Meaden, who adds, “because we see how it’s applied – in areas such as ground improvements, or helping to build a football club’s interactive website, for example.”

Toolstation has sponsored the 112-year-old Western League (the company’s head office is in Somerset) for nine years and has just completed the first of a three-year deal to act as title sponsors for the NCEL, home to more than forty football clubs in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.

Next month, an inaugural North v South charity match will take place, with Knaresborough Town of the NCEL, taking on Bristol Manor Farm, representing the Western League. All proceeds from the match will go to a Toolstation-nominated charity.

“Isn’t this what grassroots football is all about?” says Mr Meaden, clearly relishing the forthcoming duel. In a week when football’s name has been badly tarnished by those who are supposed to be at its managerial pinnacle, he has a point.

While the goodwill deriving from a direct involvement in grassroots football might be difficult to calculate, the very association reflects the ethos of a company willing to spend its sponsorship pounds wisely, a feature which has a resonance across the country, not just amongst non-league football fans.

Here, then, is a high-profile company that appreciates the importance of having an ongoing interest with, and in, local communities.

Accordingly, we must sideline conventional methods of measuring its effectiveness for how can such an arrangement be valued? The truth is, it’s almost impossible, though I suspect the returns, while intangible in the accounting sense, are longer-lasting than dozens of other, significantly more expensive sporting sponsorships.

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