Sponsorship and Advertising - a blank cheque?

This is an interesting one for for me.

Ásgeir Leifur Höskuldsson, who is the director of the Icelandic Snowboard Association has written an open letter to the publishers of Snowboarder magazine complaining that they are currently running a series of advertisments on their website for the US Army.

Now I know full well from running a young extreme sport how important securing revenue is, but when I look at this issue, I find myself falling on the side of Mr Höskuldsson. It could be that I'm a bleeding heart liberal and a dirty socialist, but for me I feel that any young sport such as snowboarding or mountainboarding has to recognise that it has a huge 'cool factor' with younger people out there, and it's important to bear this in mind.

What's made this even more relevant for me is that this year's OTG Team challenge is being co-sponsored by the Army. Now this is just my personal opinion, but I don't feel that the organisers have done the right thing by accepting this cash.

I suppose it's easy for me to say this as I was never put in the position to refuse the cash from a sponsor that I found morally incompatible, but I like to think that I would have stood up for what I believed in and turned the cash down. Anyway, have a read of Mr Höskuldsson's letter. It's an eloquently made point, and I rather like what he's saying.