A Crucial Miss
Even when a brand isn’t selling products that are linked to cancer, their relationship with breast cancer charities can still be complicated at best, and unethical at worst. Enter the National Football League.
Starting in 2009, the NFL launched their “Crucial Catch” campaign. Throughout the month of October, also known as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, everything from the goal posts on the field to the gloves on the players and hats on the coaches were pink. On top of that, fans could purchase pink jerseys and other accessories from the NFL’s online store, with the promise that the proceeds were going to the American Cancer Society (ACS) to be used for breast cancer research. But according to a groundbreaking report done by Business Insider, the NFL was pretty blatantly misleading fans about just how much money they were actually donating. The report found that the NFL takes a 25% royalty from the wholesale price of an item (which is already half as much as the retail price), and then donates 90% of that royalty to the ACS. So that means when a pink Detroit Lions jersey is sold for $100, the NFL takes a 25% royalty from the $50 wholesale price, which amounts to $12.50. Of that $12.50, only $11.25 goes to the ACS, and the rest goes to the NFL (Gaines, 2013). A fan buying a $100 could be forgiven for thinking they were making a $100 donation to the ACS, when in reality the ACS was barely getting 11% of the fan’s money.
On top of the shady business practices surrounding the size of the donation the NFL was actually making, fans were also quick to point out the disconnect between the NFL claiming to care about women’s health and the way the league handles the actions of some of their players. The NFL has a fairly persistent domestic violence problem. In 2013, Ray Rice was caught on video punching his then-fiancé in the face, then proceeding to drag her through a hallway and knock her out. Despite the Baltimore Ravens calling it a “serious matter”, Rice was only suspended for two games of the 2014 season. The NFL went on to implement a minimum six-game suspension for domestic violence charges after that. But since it went in place, 20 players have been accused of domestic violence by women, and only four have actually been given the six game suspension. In the 2017 draft, three teams selected players with domestic violence or sexual assault charges. For many, the NFL’s commitment to women’s health via supporting breast cancer research was difficult to take seriously given the league’s seeming indifference to domestic violence.
The Crucial Catch Campaign ended in 2015. In total, only 8.01% of the money that was spent on pink NFL merchandise throughout the Crucial Catch campaign actually went to the ACS. According to Sports Illustrated, the NFL donates about $1.1 million every year to the ACS, which is less than .01% of the approximately $10 billion they rake in each year. $1 million a year divided up between the NFL’s 32 teams means that each franchise is donating approximately $31,000 each year, which is pennies compared to how much the NFL often fines its own players for wearing cleats or gloves in support of some other cause that isn’t an official NFL partner. As Sports Illustrated put it, “the NFL’s prohibition against non-sanctioned breast cancer acknowledgement- the idea that any action outside its carefully crafted marketing campaign somehow affects the bottom line- is at best disingenuous, and at worst flagrantly hypocritical”.
Of course, some money to charity is better than no money to charity. But when well-known brands are misleading hundreds of thousands of customers about how much money is really being donated, the non-profits could be suffering as a result. A personal donation directly to the ACS, or anywhere else, likely will make more of an impact than the $11.25 donated from a very expensive jersey.
