A sponsorship deal with Shell – what was British Cycling thinking?

Britain deserves far better than what the current British Cycling board is delivering, writes Donnachadh McCarthy

It is crucial that British Cycling immediately reneges on its betrayal of young cyclists across Britain by abandoning the Shell deal (AFP via Getty Images)

The outrage that greeted the news that British Cycling had sold out the next generation, by signing an eight-year sponsorship deal with Shell, Europe’s largest oil corporation, was instantaneous.

Its Twitter feed was flooded with furious members and cyclists condemning the move. Within hours, an online petition set up by Badvertising had been signed by over 1,000 cycling clubs, former Olympians, British Cycling members and other organisations.

As a co-founder of Stop Killing Cyclists, along with our committee, we balloted our 8,000 members to see whether they supported a boycott of British Cycling and a call for the cycling community to stage protests at British Cycling events. The result was an astonishing 98 per cent backing!

But this is just the latest furore at British Cycling. The organisation was recently ridiculed for calling on cyclists not to cycle on the day of the royal funeral (imagine the AA telling drivers not to drive?) and it was only last year that British Cycling’s former top doctor was found guilty in a huge doping scandal.

But what was missed in the coverage was that British Cycling’s previous major sponsor was HSBC – the world’s 13th largest funder of fossil fuels. And Britain’s major international professional cycle racing team Ineos Grenadiers, the former Team Sky, is now sponsored by Britain’s richest fossil fuel billionaire, Jim Ratcliffe, the owner of Ineos.

So why are so many fossil-fuelled corporate sponsors attracted to sponsoring cycling? Their logos get millions of pounds of free advertising, as they are plastered all over young competitors’ racing gear. It even gets them past the advertising bar on the BBC, where the Shell logo on young British Cycling competitors is already being splashed across its screens and website.

But more importantly, being associated with a green sustainable transport mode like cycling greenwashes their brand. The eight-year sponsorship deal with Shell takes us up to 2030, when the UN says we need to have cut carbon emissions by 45 per cent to have any chance of remaining under a 1.5C rise in temperatures.

But recent reports say Shell plans to spend $46bn on expanding its oil and fossil gas investments over that eight-year timeline. It is, of course, far more advantageous for Shell to have its brand associated with nice young green sportspeople, than with its climate-trashing business model.

So how did British Cycling get into this mess? One possible clue is that its board is dominated by the financial and banking services world, with many of them having this background. Their chair, Frank Slevin, is the former head of Global Banking for HSBC, British Cycling’s former sponsor from 2017.

When we asked British Cycling: “Can you confirm whether or not in that capacity, Mr Slevin oversaw HSBC loans to Shell or any other major oil and gas corporations?” British Cycling said they could not comment and also refused to state how many members had resigned following the announcement.

Aside from this scandal, it must be noted that British Cycling is utterly failing in its prime purpose to promote cycling in the UK. For decades now, despite some bright spots in London and Manchester, pioneered by Sadiq Khan, Chris Boardman and Andy Burnham, cycling’s share of transport trips has languished under a miserable 2 per cent for decades.

When Stop Killing Cyclists staged a national protest calling on the Tory government to raise its current abysmal 1 per cent of the transport budget devoted to cycling, up to the 20 per cent advocated by the UN, British Cycling refused to back the action.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, cycling groups have staged a national protest called Pedal On Parliament for years now, which helped create the momentum for the SNP/Green coalition to announce that 10 per cent of the Scottish transport budget would be invested in building a national protected cycle network in Scotland.

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So, whilst it is crucial that British Cycling immediately reneges on its betrayal of young cyclists across Britain by abandoning the Shell deal that is forcing young sportspeople to wear what is – for many of us – its despised logo, that is not enough. The chair of the board, Frank Slevin, needs to resign immediately, along with the rest of the financiers who got them into this mess.

We need a new board to ensure British Cycling becomes an effective advocate for investment in Britain’s protected cycle network, to enable kids to cycle safely to school, adults to healthily cycle to work and to slash our transport carbon emissions, which remain the single largest source of UK territorial emissions, as well as to promote competitive cycling.

Britain deserves far better than what the current British Cycling board is delivering. And it is time to kick all the dirty oil corporations and their climate trashing bankers out of all cycling institutions and competitions. We got rid of tobacco advertising; we can do the same with this far more lethal threat to young people.