We don't sport-wash

We don't sport wash

There is money we will take and money we will not, and I would rather write the line down in public now than negotiate it in private later.

Sport washing, at the grassroots level, is simpler and more common than the geopolitical version that makes headlines. It is a brand paying to be seen next to kids' sport without changing anything about kids' sport. Logo on the shirt, banner by the pitch, a launch photo with some under-10s, job done. The brand gets the warm glow. The club gets a cheque, usually a small one. The kids get a different colour of shirt. Nothing else moves.

I understand why it persists. It is easy to buy, easy to photograph, easy to report to a board. But it is rented attention, and rent buys nothing that lasts. When the deal ends, the shirt changes and no trace remains that the brand was ever there. That is not our vibe, and we will not sell it.

Here is the strange part: it is not even what the market wants any more. Deloitte Digital found back in 2022 that around 70% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands delivering personalised digital experiences; generic badge placement is the exact opposite of that. Deloitte and the IOC counted more than 12 billion engagements on Olympic social channels around Paris 2024, which tells you where attention actually lives: in the ongoing conversation, not the perimeter board. And women's elite sport passing 3 billion dollars in revenue in 2026, up 340% since 2022 on Deloitte's figures, happened substantially because brands invested in building something underdeveloped rather than renting something finished. The pattern is consistent. Building beats badging.

So here is our line, in both directions.

What we will not take money for: logos painted over children's sport with nothing underneath. Sponsorship that wants the imagery of grassroots without touching the infrastructure of it. Anything that treats a nine-year-old's Sunday morning as ad inventory. And any deal that asks us to bend what a child sees, collects or experiences to fit a media plan. The community is not for sale as a backdrop.

What we will happily take money for: funding the development infrastructure itself. A brand that pays for the coaching tools of a hundred clubs that could never afford them. A brand that funds development frameworks in a sport, or underwrites free licences in communities the funding never reaches. A brand that stands behind a season of actual child development and gets an honest account of what changed: kids seen, coaches supported, sessions run. Not vanity reach numbers. What changed.

That does not mean stripping the colour, style or culture out of sport. We like the shirt, the design, the drop, the creator and the moment people want to be part of. We just think a brand earns that place by contributing something real to the community around it. A great partnership can look brilliant and leave something useful behind.

The difference is not cosmetic, it is structural. Badge sponsorship sits on top of the sport. Infrastructure funding sits underneath it. One is visible and hollow; the other is mostly invisible and permanent. When a brand funds the tools a volunteer coach uses every week, it becomes part of how the club works, welcomed inside the community rather than printed on top of it. Nobody ever felt belonging towards a perimeter board. People remember who fixed the roof.

And inside the community is where brands are genuinely welcome, on the community's terms. Grassroots sport is not anti-commercial; it is one of the most loyal audiences on earth to those who actually help. The parents running these clubs know exactly who turned up with real support and who turned up with a photographer.

I am aware this stance costs us money in the short term. Badge deals are the easy revenue in sport, and we say no to the easy version. But we are building something meant to hold the trust of parents, coaches and kids for decades, and trust does not survive being rented out. Every cheap deal taken now is a conversation I cannot win with a parent later.

So that is the line. Brands inside the community, funding the thing itself, measured honestly. Never painted on top of it. If you work for a brand and the second model is the one you actually want, we should talk, and I am writing a full paper on what that looks like in practice, called The Real Activation.

It will be at shotclubhouse.com, alongside everything else we believe.