“We took a lot of positives coming from sports last year” – Yearwood
…ExxonMobil to continue supporting sports in 2019
By Clifton Ross
After a strong year of corporate sponsorship and playing a major role in the expansion of athletes and sports in Guyana, ExxonMobil’s Community Relations and Communications Manager Nicholas Yearwood hailed 2018 as s super year for the company, hinting that 2019 could be even bigger.
Yearwood told Guyana Times Sport during an exclusive interview on Thursday that the company, which has been responsible for headlining the financial, economic
and tourism arenas during 2018, is geared towards the development of sports in Guyana. He described 2018 as a good year for the company and its sporting endeavours, adding that it was great to be impactful in something so crucial as the sport sector.
“We took a lot of positives coming from sports last year (2018), we had a lot of good feedback from the youth because they appreciated the involvement throughout the summer period when people complaining that there wasn’t much to do,” said Yearwood.
Exxon has been a major sponsor in 2018, backing most of the major sports such as motor-racing, football, hockey and cricket in transforming already exciting tournaments into the next level of sports and entertainment for Guyanese.
The company was the marquee sponsor of the 2018 finals local franchise the Guyana Amazon Warriors, who proudly flaunted its logo and name on their 2018 season official playing kits.
With major tournaments such as the Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL), one of the Caribbean’s main and biggest sporting events each year, as well as the recent Futsal tournament attached to the Exxon name, Yearwood said it has been a great journey thus far as they seek to widen the dimension in reaching all disciplines. “Supporting the country through the Hero CPL was great, also developing youths through different capacities is something we are quite happy to do it here in Guyana,” he added.
Despite sports being on the rise, and Guyana making more strides internationally and regionally, corporate sponsorship remains a key factor in most if not all of the locally-based sport fraternities’ agenda. With corporate support, more can be done to aid in the expansion of athletes and sports associations. And with the recognition of the value of sponsorship, Yearwood concluded by confirming 2019 could see more good things in stock for sports in Guyana.
He further confirmed that the proposals received last year were all evenly and thoroughly reviewed and the company was indeed satisfied with the content of the proposals; thus its immediate support of the various endeavours successfully attempted last year.
“We saw a lot of values in the proposals we received; every single one was evaluated evenly and we saw an opportunity to get involved and be impactful so we took it and we will continue to do it. We do have a strategy to get more involved and we do have plans to be more present than we were last year,” he concluded.