Kabataan Partylist Rep. (and friend of the blog) Mong Palatino has an interesting post up at his blog about the state of Philippine sports, after attending a summit organized by the Philippine Sports Commission and the Philippine Olympic Committee. The post is chockfull of data, and is well worth reading in its entirety, but one part jumped out at me:

[PSC Chairman Richie Garcia] complained that sports bodies are too dependent on PSC funds. He blamed this on the poor support from private sector. In fact, only 5 percent of the Top 1,000 corporations in the country are into sports sponsorships. The PSC chairman added that private support exists when there is vested interest.

I agree that we are too dependent on the government to get things done when it comes to sports. It’s an attitude that doesn’t augur well for the chances of our athletes because the government will always be bogged down by bureaucracy and a lack of funds.

Unfortunately, it’s an attitude that pervasive at all levels, from sports fans who keep whining about how the government needs to do more to support athletes, to officials like Noli Eala whose first scapegoat when things go wrong is always the government.

Look, I’m as big a sports fan as anyone can get, but I understand that with a country riddled with problems, sports will end up being low on the list of the government’s priorities. Even if our sports agencies were to weed out corruption and red tape, they will still end up with limited resources, which would still not be enough to give our athletes the training they deserve.

The onus really should fall on the private sector to support sports programs in the country. But I think we need to have a paradigm shift as to how we solicit sponsors for these programs.

I always cringe when I hear athletes thank their patrons profusely, whether they be MVP, Boss Danding, or Congressman Manhik Manaog. To be sure, these people deserve credit for the resources they contribute for the athletes’ training. But there’s still that attitude where these patrons are doing these things out of the goodness of their heart, and they could cut the support anytime they want, so these athletes really ought to be grateful that there are angels who give them money to keep training. It reminds me a little of those contestants on Willing Willie who thank Willie Revillame profusely for the goodness of his heart.

I think it’s time our athletes move beyond being charity cases for rich businessmen, and it starts with understanding how these businesses work. For example, Manny Pangilinan got a lot of credit for donating a million pesos for the Azkals before their trip to Indonesia, which the team was grateful to have of course. But the thing is, in 2008, PLDT, which Pangilinan chairs, spent some PhP3.7 billion for sales and promotions expenses for its wireless group. That PhP1-million check that Pangilinan wrote for the Azkals was going to be spent anyway; it was just a matter of him saying that it should be made out to the football team instead of, say, a new print ad featuring John Lloyd Cruz.

But PLDT is hardly the only corporation in the Philippines who spends that much on advertising and promotions. So you have companies with all this money to spend, and the key for sports organizations is to convince these guys to spend it on them instead of elsewhere. It’s not the easiest thing in the world, because it involves actual marketing acumen to sell your program as a product that would provide advertising value for companies. But it can be done, as it has been in other countries. They don’t even have to beg and rely on patrons who would do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

Of course, there’s still a need for organizations to get things rolling, to develop the programs first before sponsors come in. Here they could use government resources, subsidies from international organizations (i.e. the FIFA assistance to the Philippine Football Federation), and ‘godfathers’ (i.e. Dan Palami of the Azkals). But the goal really ought to be making the program attractive enough for advertisers to come in, give their support, and most importantly, get their money’s worth.