43 decisive: a title sponsorship would have cost us 1.5 million euros, the presenting sponsorship half as much.” Making choices Thus, the EHL started out with ABN AMRO as one of the principal sponsors. Unfortunately, the new European hockey competition EHL had only been in business for a year when the fi nancial crisis struck. As a result, ABN AMRO were successively taken over by a trio of banks and then nationalised. Then, ABN AMRO merged with Fortis and were effectively – from a global perspective – a small bank. Although it managed to maintain its budget for sponsoring fairly well the bank had to make a number of decisions. It stopped sponsoring international hockey federation FIH, withdrew from football club Ajax (for which they had functioned as the primary as well as the sub-sponsor for years), and dropped its sponsoring of golf. The contract with the EHL however, was extended for three years under the same fi nancial conditions starting in 2010. According to Boekhorst and Hockey is essentially a sport for the entire family PIET-HEIN GEERIS Geeris, the advent of Jons Hensel as Tournament Director for the EHL was the deciding factor in this decision. Along with Maurits Hendriks (now the Technical Director of the Dutch Olympic federation NOC*NSF) and Bert Spaak (PRO SPORT) he belongs to the founding fathers of the Euro Hockey League. “Hensel’s principal merit is that he has managed to make the event much more attractive to sponsors, which was very necessary!” says Boekhorst. “The EHL started out aspiring to be the Champions League of hockey. In my opinion the EHL has absolutely realised this aspiration in terms of sportsmanship, and the image that it radiates, as well as by means of the rules it has implemented and the innovations it has introduced. For example, the EHL has introduced video umpiring, new rules related to free balls, and playing in four periods. A great number of these innovations have been implemented in regular hockey. That having been said, unfortunately, the commercial ambitions have not yet been realised, despite the fact that there were such high hopes and everyone was betting on it. We Piet-Hein Geeris (194 caps) is a former hockey international and Sponsoring Manager with ABN AMRO. 20 07 20 12 FOTO: FRANK UIJLENBROEK Pagina 42
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