Tremain Chris: Major Events Management Bill — First Reading 
Tremain Chris: Major Events Management Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:637;Page:7499] 
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) 
: 
 I refer to an article by Abram Sauer who talks about ambush marketing which in fact is the principal focus of the Major Events Management Bill 2006. Abram begins his article by saying: “Imagine you throw a party and invite heaps of brilliant interesting people. Imagine your roommate fails to help with the planning or the cost. Imagine the night of the party your deadbeat roomie shows up and claims co-sponsorship. Imagine watching in awe as the freeloader takes credit for your expense and effort. Now imagine that party cost you $20M.” There would be some concerns. 
What we are talking about here is a party that we are looking to hold in 2011. We wish to protect the rights of the sponsors that are going to put a significant amount of money into that tournament and to give them as much protection as possible for their sponsorship dollar. It is something that unfortunately we did not do back in 2003 when we had the right to co-host the 2003 Rugby World Cup with Australia. 
I will refer to my own electorate Hawke’s Bay and to a gentleman by the name of Tom Johnson. Tom was a colleague of my father Kel and played in the Hawke’s Bay Ranfurly Shield era in the 1960s. Tom was a very influential man in the New Zealand rugby scene and rose to the status of the New Zealand rugby board. It was an instigator in bringing about the initial Rugby World Cup and as a result the initial tournament in 1987 when ambush marketing was not at its foremost. But since those days ambush marketing has become a true science—as Mr Copeland referred to it before—that we should have known about when we were looking to host the 2003 Rugby World Cup. 
I want to talk members through some of the stories about ambush marketing and how complex it has actually become. Let us have a look at the 1984 Olympics where Kodak sponsored TV broadcasting of the games as well as the US track team despite Fuji being the official sponsor. Kodak was able to get significant mileage out of that. Let us go to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics where Nike sponsored the press conferences with the US basketball team despite Reebok being the games’ official sponsor. Perhaps one of the greatest ambush marketing efforts of all time was the marketing feat of all-time Nike man Michael Jordan who was “Mr Air Sponsorship” himself. He accepted the gold medal for basketball but covered up the Reebok logo on his kit. Nike has been the all-time champion of ambush marketing. With its association with the Rugby World Cup it is something that I guess we need to take into consideration. 
Let us have a look at Nike’s ambush of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics which is probably seen as the ambush of all ambushes according to writers on this subject. Saving the US$50 million that an official sponsorship would have cost—so Nike did not actually front up with that $50 million—Nike plastered the city in billboards handed out swoosh banners for people to wave at the competitions and erected an enormous Nike centre overlooking the stadium. It was able to obtain significant mileage over the event without putting one sponsorship dollar into the event itself. In fact Nike has moved to the point now where it tends to sponsor individuals in teams as opposed to events so that it can use that as a legal form of ambush marketing. 
If we have a look at the Atlanta debacle we see that many thought that Nike had been an official sponsor of the games. More recently in a poll in 2001 a study found that from a list of 45 likely sponsors of the 2002 World Cup 20 percent of those polled thought Nike was a sponsor when in fact it was not. 
It is not limited to large corporates like Nike. There is a fantastic example at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City when Anheuser-Busch paid more than US$50 million to sponsor that particular event. In accordance with its agreement it got all the rights to use the word “Olympic” and the five rings logo. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
CHRIS TREMAIN 
: Before the bell rang for the dinner break we were debating the Major Events Management Bill and I had just traversed the issues around ambush marketing in particular those relating to large corporates. I talked about Nike’s involvement with the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where Nike had plastered the city in billboards handed out swoosh banners to wave at the competitions and erected an enormous Nike centre overlooking the stadium—all ambush tactics designed to obtain a greater profile in Atlanta even though Nike was not a key sponsor of the event. 
I then moved on to discuss and I wanted to finish with an example of a smaller company that used ambush marketing at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Anheuser-Busch paid more than $50 million to be a major sponsor at that event. The Schirf Brewing Company which is a small local company came up with a rather ingenious and apparently legal idea of marking its delivery trucks with a brand called “Wasutch Beers—the Unofficial Beer of the 2002 Olympic Games”. So in accordance with the copyright rules Schirf avoided using either the word “Olympics” or the five-ring logo. However it had without doubt connected itself with the games and therefore benefited from the marketing that came from that connection. 
So there are big companies and small companies that benefit from ambush marketing. We even have local examples. Recently some of our own athletes used a type of ambush marketing at the last Olympic Games with the likes of Sarah Ulmer Bevan Doherty and Hamish Carter who had contradictory sponsorships between the main-game sponsors their team sponsors and their own personal sponsors. 
The fact is that there will be ambush marketing efforts at Rugby World Cup 2011. Despite this legislation that is before the House tonight companies will not stop from working for the best position for their brand. We as a nation need to do everything in our power to stop these efforts and to maximise the genuine return for sponsors at the 2011 Rugby World Cup at the rowing championships in 2010 at the under-17 women’s football world cup in 2008 and at the Cricket World Cup planned to be hosted here in 2015. 
I suggest that if this legislation had been in place when the final stages of the negotiations for the joint hosting of Rugby World Cup 2003 were being held we would have been in a far better position and $90 million in co-hosting rights would not have gone out of the window. 
This legislation will help in four key areas and I will focus on those as I draw to the end of this speech. Firstly clause 6 looks at declarations of major events and protections for major events. So the legislation does not relate to smaller sporting occasions or down-a-level sporting events such as the Super 14 the National Provincial Championship or for that matter other competitions on a regional or national basis. 
Subpart 1 of Part 2 clauses 7 to 14 deals with ambush marketing by association. Subpart 2 clauses 15 to 25 deals with ambush marketing by intrusions. Clauses 24 and 25 also deal with ticket scalping protections. 
I close by suggesting an area on which I think the select committee will need to focus which is the offence and penalty regimes of the bill. A good example is the Rugby World Cup 1999 in Cardiff where scalping was at a premium. Tickets were being marketed for prices in excess of £500. Members on a tour party I was with had bought tickets the face value of which was about £125. They were scalped for £500. Significant money was to be made by scalpers doing that. I suggest that a $5000 penalty to avert scalpers will just not work. Likewise for larger companies like Nike a $150000 penalty will do nothing to avert them from looking at ambush campaigns—campaigns that will benefit them significantly without their having to put one iota of sponsorship into the Rugby World Cup 2011. 
In summary I believe that had this legislation been in place in 2002 it would have helped us avert the situation where we lost the joint hosting rights. I believe that this legislation will help to ensure that we get the best sponsors for the event in 2011 and that we will maximise the economic growth and the return on this investment to the whole New Zealand economy.