Flying Fijian players Tevita Ikanivere, Frank Lomani, Waisea Nayacalevu, Samo Matavesi, the team’s strength and conditioning coach David Sylvester with AUBIN brand clothing on.
Photo: Aubin
The Fiji Rugby Union (FRU) will defend each individual player’s right to maximise financial returns throughout their playing career.
An FRU spoeksperson told RNZ Pacific this is critical as players are approached to become ambassadors for various brands or companies.
The spokesperson added that, at the same time, FRU will ensure these individual player endorsements comply the union’s rules and guidelines.
“Individual players are professional sportspeople and have their own personal endorsement deals,” they said.
“FRU will defend the right of each player to maximise their return over their playing career.
“In saying that, FRU also ensures the interests of our sponsors are not compromised, but promoted.”
The spokesperson was responding to queries raised by former FRU senior manager Charlie Charters and others, following the public endorsement of the United Kingdom-based AUBIN a clothing brand by senior members of the Flying Fijians and the team’s strength and conditioning coach during their recent Europe tour.
The players, co-captains Waisea Nayacalevu and Tevita Ikanivere, were joined by Frank Lomani and Sam Matavesi in the promotion.
Flying Fijians strength and conditioning coach David Silvester, big brother of the AUBIN creative powerhouse duo of Silvester twins, Rachel and Helen, also featured.
Charters and other Fijian rugby fans took to social media to question how the players were able to promote the clothing brand when they were under Flying Fijians and on contract.
In a Facebook post on 16 November, Charters questioned how the promotion deal was put together and whether it was authorised by the FRU.
He said if the same had been done by All Blacks or Wallabies players there would be repercussions.
“The FRU owns the intellectual property surrounding the words Flying Fijians which is at the centre of both the video and blog,” Charters said.
“The FRU has no commercial relationship with Aubin and did not authorise this promotion. All the players signed a contract including a code of conduct which, on the face of it, would not allow for this sort of deal. The players should be aware of this.
“We don’t know at this stage who or how this Aubin deal was put together. But we do know that if this was the All Blacks or Wallabies and four players were featured in a commercial promotion that used the words All Blacks or Wallabies with an unauthorised entity the consequences to the players would be very grave.
Waisea Nayacalevu leads a pre-game war dance at the 2023 Rugby World Cup.
Photo: World Rugby/World Rugby via Getty Images
“Just because someone plays for a specific team doesn’t mean the player has permission to licence that team’s IP.”
He said then it was not clear if the clothing company’s generosity with four players was extended to all the players, or if this ‘free chow’ was only given to the players shown.
“You don’t have to have a PhD in psychology to work out the impact on the vast majority of a team if a self-selected group of senior players gets to break the terms of their player contracts and enrich themselves on the back of IP that they don’t own, while everyone else follows the rules and gets no ‘free chow’,” Charters added.
The FRU insider said it is a fine line and team management are handling this with diligence and care, saying individual deals are left for the players to negotiate with their own teams but Flying Fijian Sponsorship deals are based around a team organised event.
“This video endorsement was based on individual personal endorsement deals of each player involved, as such, each player involved, did so on their own endorsement right,” the spokesman said.
“There were no Fiji Rugby logo seen on that video and neither was it a Flying Fijian advertisement.”
RNZ Pacific had reached out to the clothing company for comment. We are yet to receive a response.
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Author : rugby-247
Publish date : 2024-11-29 01:53:54
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