In reply to wbo:
> it is never good form to bad mouth former sponsors.
This. If a big part of your budget balancing comes from sponsorship, you make very sure to leave quietly when dumped, whatever you might feel personally about it. The reason being that you will need to replace that sponsor with a new sponsor and if you get a rep for bad mouthing former sponsors, I would imagine potential sponsors will dry up.
> If they've decided to drop their sponsored athletes re. Participation in illegal activities that is barely a surprise.
That was exactly what I thought after watching the trailer for Valley Uprising a few minutes ago (full disclosure: I've not seen the whole film so I could be wrong about the emphasis). The film is portrayed as being about taking illegal drugs, breaking other federal laws and generally living an anarchistically based philosophy.
I'm pretty sure sponsors routinely turn a blind eye to aspects of their athletes which don't fit the product image and much to the benefit of both. But. When the athelete is out there specifically promoting values that are directly at odds with the big business views of a company as large as Clif, there are going to be consequences.
> I also very much doubt these are six figure contracts. I got free stuff from power bar in the 90's, which wasn't much more than a few boxes of bars and some t shirts. Even from nike et al the numbers for most people are not great
Yeah, I doubt it's 6 figures but things have moved on a lot from the 90s. Climbing is a mainstream sport (as in; the stream is tears and they come from the traditionalists who just caught me classifying their pursuit as a "sport") and the value of sponsorship is likely to have increased exponentially in line with the popularity of climbing.