The Ben Mulroney Show - Bugging an athlete during a match – is there ever a good time?

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

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there's there's just two types of airports when you're driving towards them there's the ones where you see the signs and you've got to read the names of all the airlines and they'll tell you what terminal to go to but then there are the other ones that recognize that the human brain recognizes thousands upon thousands upon thousands of logos and instead of showing you the name of the airline it shows you the the brand name of the i'll show you the maple leaf of air Canada or the delta of Delta and you instinctively know where to go. You don't have to read, you just see and know. And in other words, we are very brand specific and very brand knowledgeable.

And there's no person who knows branding better than our next guest. Do we have them yet? Oh, we don't have them. Well, I was going to talk about Tony Chapman. But yeah, I read that. Every time I drive to the airport in Toronto, I have to read. I mean, I didn't know which terminal to go to, but if I didn't know, there's a lot of reading that you have to do as you're going to the airport.

You got to slow down and read through Air Lingus and Air Canada and Air France and Air This and Air That, as opposed to just showing us the logos. And it reminds me that branding is omnipresent. And we are a society that is beholden the brands and we are living and dying by brands. And one of the stories we're going to talk about, which we might as well start talking about right now, is the story of what happens, what happens when you are as an athlete sponsored by one brand, but the tournament that you're playing in is sponsored by another. And it happened recently at the Cincinnati Open where two players were drinking a particular brand of wall. but the sponsorship of the event was from a different brand of water and in the middle of a match the the officials told the players that they had to cover up the brand of their water

now I have no problem with with a player having to defer to the sponsorship of the event For example, at the Olympics in 1992, when Michael Jordan, who was at the time probably still is the most significant athlete ever under the Nike swoosh banner, had to hide in order to respect the fact that USA basketball was sponsored by Adidas, when he stood up on the podium to get his gold medal, he wore an American flag draped over the logo of Adidas. us so that everybody could be happy. And so that's a, that's an important, that's sort of an important primer. In this case, it happened mid, mid-match. This happened mid-match. So these, so you had Alcaraz, who was told in the middle of the match, hey, your water runs a foul of our branding rules and you've got to get rid of it.

Joining us now is somebody who can speak far more about this than I. Please welcome Tony Chapman to the show. Tony, where you been? I've been in your lobby waiting to get in. All right. All right. Yeah. So we're talking about what happened at the Cincinnati Open.

And I was saying that I don't have a problem when you've got competing branding deals. I don't have a problem with the sponsorship of the event trumping the sponsorship of the athlete. But they got to be told about this before they start playing. Yeah. I mean, this is a bigger issue. Because, you know, the sponsors of these tournaments are looking to get dollars from brands. Athletes are looking to get dollars for brands, and then they collide.

Do you remember 2020, the Euro Cup, Ronaldo, goes into a press conference. Coca-Cola is sponsoring it. Yeah. He looks at the Coca-Cola in front of him, throws it in the garbage and picks up some water. Yeah. And saying, Aqua, right? And that's the reality of a sponsorship. Like, you, just because you have the rights to the event, it doesn't mean you have the rights to what the athletes believes.

are. And most athletes play nice. Most athletes play nice. And Coca-Cola, in that moment, I thought it was a, there was a lack of forethought in their, from their perspective. I think they owned Desani, correct? The water company. Yeah, they owned Desani. They could have had Desani, but who knows if Desani sponsored it? Because again, the

rights get so complicated. But they're all under the Coca-Cola banner. It makes no sense to me that one would have cannibalized the other. But you could have bought the soda rights and not have the isotonic rights. You could not have this water rights. It gets, they slice this thing so thin, Ben.

And here's, it's the challenge. Everybody needs these events to get attention. Tensions the oxygen in marketing. Athletes need these sponsors just as much. And so they start competing, but this should have been, this should have happened beforehand. Yeah. And I would say that the tournament rights should supersede it. In other words, if the athlete's sponsored by another water, they shouldn't show up with

the water, given the fact that the tournament's paying their prize money. But I'm not a lawyer. I'm just thinking morally, that would be the way I would. judge who's right and who's wrong on this. Yeah, but I think the fact that, I mean, if they don't notice, if the organization doesn't notice until midway through the match, that's on them. Oh, without a question. The craziest thing is somebody called from, you'd imagine, called the next thing, you know,

the umpires having to act. And all we're doing is bringing attention to something nobody would have noticed or cared about. Yeah, exactly. But that's the mistake that the sponsor made is trying to course correct midstream because they're probably worried their bosses. watching and it's going to go, you know, ballistic on them. But here's your reality. Now, now we've got an incident. We're in the, before we, you know, this is, this is not even a drop in

the bucket. So it's, it's just again, panic that happens in these moments. And I always go to cause and effect. Okay, we're going to cause something to happen. What is the ultimate effect of it? You might get rid of that bottle for a moment, but now you've got millions of impressions working against you. Listen, I don't really care about a lot of things so long. as those things are consistent. And when I read that a UK watchdog is banning Zara ads because the models and the photos are, quote, unhealthily thin, I thought we were living in a time of body positivity, that we don't shame people's bodies anymore.

And yet we're reserving a special place for people that are deemed unhealthily thin. By the way, I looked at the picture. I don't see unhealthily thin women. I live through the 90s. I know what heroin chic looks like. This is not that. What's going on? overreach. And we're seeing it everywhere. We have so much government. And literally, I think

they just look for things. The same, again, I get another metaphor, Calgary deciding they're going to put 40 billion against world climate change. Yeah. I mean, it's just overreach. I mean, the reality is, and Zara came back and said, look, these are healthy, medically certified models. They're not thin. And I agree with you. You just said it. Like, why are you shaming somebody that way? Yeah. And again, it's just government having nothing to do or, and, getting involved in our lives in a way they shouldn't. And we as citizens have to push back. Yeah, but if they were doing the same thing and banning pictures of people who had a body,

you know, a body mass index over a certain point, saying we're not helping promote that because that's unhealthy in the other direction. I'd say, okay, at least they're being consistent, but they're not. That would be such a blowback if they did that. Of course. Because there's no common sense. It's the craziest two words I've ever seen as common. sense, especially when it comes for government, because they act on these things and make

judgments. And once again, for Zara's point of view, Jara's going to get a lot of free impressions. Yeah. Because they're basically, people are going to look at it and say, I didn't see that. Yeah. Why are you telling him, why are you banning? The word banning to me is a very, it's become part of a vernacular and it should be used with the most serious consequences in mind.

In this case, it's just becomes, like, once another, another thing that the government's trying to impose on our society to say, We will tell you how to live and what is good and what is bad. Well, also, we've created a system where there's a certain type of person who is part of the outrage machine, who is, I mean, they don't get out of bed in the morning without thinking to themselves, how am I going to be offended today? How am I going to be victimized today? And they looked at those pictures and they felt attacked by those pictures. And we have created a pathway for that outrage to have real results like this. And that has to be dismantled.

It has to be. Listen, I look at your following. And anytime somebody attacks you, there's never their name. It's also some anonymous handle on social media. And these people, as you said, they lie there with their social media slingshot saying, who can I fire out? But, you know, as a society, it's also a manifestation of how people are feeling on unsettled ground. They're standing on shifting zen. We're going to have to leave it there, my friend.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Canada is best known for politeness maple syrup and hockey, but beneath the surface lies something far darker. I'm Mike Brown and along with my co-host Matthew Stockton, we uncover the sinister side of Canada on the award. award-winning true crime podcast, Dark Putine. Each Monday, we dive into chilling criminal cases, eerie historical events, strange disappearances, and spine-tingling tales of the paranormal,

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