Jumbo Ends Partnership with Verstappen after Scandal Fallout
Jun.2 - Max Verstappen is losing one of his longest-serving and biggest personal sponsors.
Last year, Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo's CEO and owner Fritz van Eerd was embroiled in a money laundering scandal.
Almost all of Jumbo's sporting sponsorships were subsequently scrapped, except the highest profile one - 25-year-old back-to-back world champion Verstappen.
But according to Algemeen Dagblad newspaper, that is now changing - with news that Jumbo will also stop working with the Red Bull driver at the end of 2023.
Van Eerd has now departed, and his successor Ton van Veen says Jumbo needs to look away from sports sponsorships.
"Max is of course a folk hero, but he acts on the absolute world stage," said the new CEO. "We are a very good food retailer, but only in the Netherlands and a little bit in Belgium.
"We invest more than 20 million euros annually in sports sponsorship, but I can only spend every euro once. We cannot return the money that goes to Max to the customer, or put it into sustainability or health," CEO van Veen added.
The bigger issue, however, is that Jumbo's motorsport contracts are at the core of the criminal investigation into the previous CEO.
"We want nothing to do with motorsport and the allegations," van Veen confirmed.
"But with Max Verstappen and (cycling team) Jumbo-Visma, we're stopping for a completely different reason. That sponsorship has brought us a lot of brand awareness, but we have now won everything there is to win."
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Yeah and im the new ceo , so i gotta keep the shareholders/institutional/banks/pension funds happy, oh yeah and i gotta look like im doing a good job so get my bonuses as well
I doubt we'll need to hold any tag days for Max but, in the Netherlands where Max is King, the sponsorship by Jumbo and any other Dutch corporation has got to bring a significant boost in sales. I'll be curious to see how Jumbo's bottom line is affected by their short-sighted move.
I agree , seems a very short sighted move , but i suppose they dont sell there products on a world market like google for eg, however for the sake of what 10M Euros, the marketing potentials BIG
I doubt that sports sponsorships have much of an impact on supermarket sales. Seems to me price, selection and location are the biggies in that business. I believe that Jumbo is also a sponsor of the Dutch GP. Seems like a waste of money for a grocery chain.
It aligns with zones of influence. I never heard of this store, why would they have their name on a car in America?
Jumbo really helped Max with sponsering to get his race career on the road from when he was at a very young age.
But he now Max is bigger than them in terms of marketing.
So in my opinion it's better for Max to not relate his name any more to that sponsor.
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