What should sport do about Kingspan?
Here is an Irish company that started life in a yard behind a pub in Kingscourt, Co Cavan and is now a huge multinational success story. Across six decades, it has been one of the greatest economic miracles to have sprung out of rural Ireland – a company that employs almost 23,000 people in 80 countries. By stock market valuation, it’s worth somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15 billion quid.
Should a company with that story to tell be involved in sport? Hell yeah! Of course it should. Sport should be all over Kingspan and vice versa. Sponsorships and partnerships are damn hard to come by and in a marketplace dominated by companies that are trying to sell you drink or get you to gamble or sign you up to some class of social media, Kingspan should be everywhere. A blue-chip safe haven for sport sponsorship, the kind of major backer with whom nobody has a bone to pick.
In fact, it has always been slightly curious that they’ve not been more bullish and front-footed with their largesse.
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Those of us on the GAA beat occasionally find ourselves getting emails from officials in Cavan GAA, gently scolding us for calling the county’s famous GAA bowl Breffni Park and asking instead that we use its official, sponsor-friendly name, Kingspan Breffni.
These emails have generally inspired two reactions. One, most reporters have kept calling it Breffni Park, partly out of habit but also partly for pig iron. Whatever about resenting being told we have to include a sponsor’s name in anything, there’s just something cumbersome about the phrase. Virtually every other ground in the country is called Something Park/Field/Stadium – Kingspan Breffni always feels like you’ve left a word out by mistake.
The other reaction is to wonder have they nothing better to be at. If it’s important to Cavan GAA that we call it that, presumably it’s important to somebody in Kingspan. How can it be that anyone in such a global behemoth of an organisation gives even the slightest rooty-toot about what kind of return they’re getting out of the naming rights on a provincial GAA ground?
Kingspan made a profit of €887 million in 2023. Its sponsorship of Cavan GAA is estimated to be about €150,000 a year and its name and logo first appeared on Cavan jerseys in 1995. Regardless of what RTÉ or the newspapers or podcasts call the venue where Cavan play their games, they’ve got plenty of value out of the partnership over the decades.
Kingspan have expanded their portfolio, of course. Their deal with Ulster Rugby has run since 2005. They sponsor the East of Ireland golf tournament. Since May of this year, they are the main sponsors of Uruguay Rugby. We ain’t in Corgarry any more, Toto.
They have a growing stable of brand ambassadors too. Shane Lowry and Leona Maguire both have long-standing relationships with Kingspan and carry the company logo on their shirts and zippy-tops. Johnny Sexton signed up in June to be the face of their Kickstart Community Sports Fund. Sailor Tom Dolan, currently the race leader after the first two legs of in the Solitaire du Figaro Paprec, is a Kingspan man as well.
None of them will have needed to be reminded of their ties this week. The final report on the Grenfell fire put them all in the spotlight, whether they liked it or not. It found that only about 5 per cent of the insulation of Grenfell Tower was made up of a Kingspan product and that the company was not responsible for the spread of the fire.
[ Damning Grenfell fire report puts Kingspan under spotlightOpens in new window ]
But it also said that Kingspan had “knowingly created a false market” for insulation products and demonstrated “deeply entrenched and persistent dishonesty ... in pursuit of commercial gain”.
Lowry was the subject of a story in the Guardian in the days before the report came out, quoting a spokesman for the Grenfell United survivors’ group. “We’ve been writing to him [Lowry] for years, saying get this sponsorship off your arm,” said Ed Daffarn. “It’s deeply upsetting and deeply offensive, and he doesn’t reply to us.”
Clearly, this is not a good look for anyone, least of all one of Ireland’s most popular sportspeople. Lowry’s appeal to the masses is that he comes across as a fundamentally good lad, decent and ordinary, no badness in him. Everyone feels they know someone like Lowry – the only difference is the magic he has in his hands and wrists.
This is a construct, of course. And it is, in many ways, an unfair image for Lowry to have to live up to. There is plenty of truth in it, as anyone who has met him will testify, but that’s really neither here nor there. The image is the thing that makes him such an attractive brand ambassador – even if that image is of someone who isn’t one bit bothered about his image.
There’s no mystery as to why some marketing genius in Kingspan thought they’d be a good fit with Lowry. Country boys made good, rural Ireland excelling on the international stage, all that carry-on. But as the Grenfell report laid out in brutal detail, Kingspan have been no strangers to ruthless, cynical behaviour, as long as it made them money.
Last week rounded off the most lucrative season of Lowry’s career. His ninth place finish in the Tour Championship meant that his PGA Tour earnings for the year were a shade over $7.7 million (€6.9 million). Whatever his Kingspan sponsorship is worth to him has to be a pittance by comparison.
Ulster Rugby are winding down their partnership with Kingspan over the coming season. Everybody else – Lowry and his representatives included – declined to comment when various media outlets popped the question this week. That said, it’s hard to see him being able to get through next week’s Irish Open without having to address it in some way.
Clearly, Lowry doesn’t need Kingspan’s money. If he keeps up his association, he must know that his choice makes a statement. It’s telling the world that he is willing to stand beside them, even allowing for what the Grenfell report contains and what the survivors’ groups say about the company. That’s what being a brand ambassador is. They’re using your name to put a shine on theirs.
But it’s hard to shine anything without getting some smudge on yourself. The question for Lowry and the rest of sport now is how much of Kingspan’s stain they are willing to take on.
