As the NFL fails and refuses to pressure Washington owner Daniel Snyder to change the dictionary language that has been the team’s name for decades, NFL sponsors are the subject of pressures to do what the NFL will not do.
Via Mary Emily O’Hara from AdWeek, 87 investment firms representing $ 620 billion in assets sent letters last week to Nike, FedEx and Pepsi, asking companies to refuse to do business with the Washington franchise until it changes last name.
“Many of us have raised this issue with Nike for years without much success,” said the letter to the official NFL clothing supplier. “But in light of the Black Lives Matter movement that has focused the world’s attention on centuries of systemic racism, we are witnessing a new wave of opposition on behalf of the team. Therefore, it is time for Nike to face the magnitude of this moment, to make clear its opposition on behalf of the racist team and to take tangible and meaningful steps to put pressure on the team so that she stops using it. “
FedEx has the naming rights for the stadium where Washington plays, and CEO Fred Smith has a minority stake in the team. Pepsi is the official NFL soft drink for the NFL, and it presents the halftime show at every Super Bowl.
“This is a larger movement of which Indigenous peoples are a part,” Carla Fredericks, director of First Peoples Worldwide and director of the American Indian Law Clinic at the University of Colorado Law School, told AdWeek. “Indigenous peoples were somehow excluded from the civil rights movement in the late 1960s in many ways, because our conditions were so difficult on reserve and our ability to engage publicly was very limited because of this . With social media now, everything is obviously very different. “
It remains to be seen whether the pressure on these companies will put pressure on the team. Again, at a time when the NFL is doing nothing to push Snyder to do the right thing, the pressure will have to come from other places. It will be interesting to see if any of these companies will do anything other than make a “no comment” and join the league and team in a fairly obvious effort to use up time until everyone starts to pay attention to something else.
