In the penultimate day of the Punjab Gold Cup, all members of the Indian team used a piece of cloth to hide a sports good manufacturer’s logo on their jerseys, before and during the match.
It was gathered that the Leisure Sports Management, which has a contract with the erstwhile KPS Gill’s Indian Hockey Federation, brought a judgement from the High Court of Kolkata. Accordiong to the LSM plea the Indian national team is mandated to wear only Sahara logo on their jersies.
The question here is, whether the logo the team used was of sponsor, in particular, other than Sahara.
We have seen numerous instances in the past the logos of sports goods and shoe manufactures, branding their products. In hockey’s case, sticks of each player bear different manufacturers logo.
Be it Olympics or Asian Games, irrespective of main sponsors like Samsung, the jerseys sport the manufacturers brand logo as well, like adidas and reebok.
For example, all boxers and the entire Athens Olympic team sported wears manufactured by delhi based Shiv Naresh company.
In Punjab Gold Cup’s case, a Jalandhar based TK company supplied the wears after winning a contract from Sports Authority of India.
What the team sported so far was simply this company’s logo, which has nothing to do with the team’s sponsorship.
The Indian team as of now is without a sponsor, and why is it so is an area for future study.
Even if court would say the Sahara logo should be used on the jersey, it cannot take away the rights of sports good manufacuters to use their logo on their product.
Would have we done this if any MNC is the equipment and sports good providers to Punjab Gold Cup team?