Canada Soccer sponsor offers financial support to resolve dispute with women's team
CTV
GE Appliances says it is offering sponsorship money in hopes of helping resolve the labour impasse between Canada Soccer and the women's national team.
GE Appliances says it is offering sponsorship money in hopes of helping resolve the labour impasse between Canada Soccer and the women's national team.
The company sent a letter to interim Canada Soccer president Charmaine Crooks expressing its "deep concern" regarding the dispute between the two sides and said it's prepared to put up $100,000 "in incremental sponsorship activation funding, explicitly targeted to support the women's team program."
The amount is additional money to GE Appliances' existing sponsorship of Canada Soccer.
"I think this dispute between Canada Soccer and the women's national team had gone on for a fair amount of time," chief brand officer Bob Park told The Canadian Press. "We really wanted to get involved, really to be a positive force in soccer.
"We're really in soccer for one big reason, and we want to be known as a true corporate supporter of the game in Canada. In order to do that, we want to align with a partner, in this case Canada Soccer, and we expect that our brand values are shared and they exhibit those values in their actions.
"Of late, that's been a little bit more of a challenge, so we wanted to offer up some solutions."
The move comes four days after Canada Soccer and the women's team agreed in principle upon an interim deal on compensation for 2022.
