Why Sport Needs Corporate Trinidad & Tobago
By Dr Jack Austin Warner
The recent decision by the Trinidad and Tobago Hockey Board (TTHB) to withdraw both its Under-21 men’s and women’s teams from the Junior Pan American Hockey Championship in Santiago, Chile, is disappointing; but it should not be surprising.
Capped subventions, rising international costs, and uncertainty in state funding have placed many National Sports Organisations (NSOs) in a permanent state of crisis management rather than long-term development.
What this moment demands is not sympathy, but a strategic reset, one that redefines how sport is funded, marketed, and valued in Trinidad and Tobago.
The TTHB’s experience is emblematic of a wider structural problem. When government subventions are capped at roughly $1.3 million, yet a single junior international campaign costs $1.6 million, the arithmetic alone tells us the model is broken.
NSOs are being forced to choose between senior success and junior development, between today’s medals and tomorrow’s teams. No serious sporting nation makes those choices lightly, and none makes them repeatedly without consequence.
The uncomfortable truth is that NSOs can no longer operate as grant-dependent entities waiting for annual allocations. They must evolve into aggressive brand managers, partnership builders, and development strategists.
That does not mean abandoning the state; it means complementing public funding with private capital anchored in clear, credible plans.
For corporate Trinidad & Tobago, this is not charity; it is an opportunity. Sport is one of the most powerful nation-branding tools available. It shapes international perception, opens soft diplomatic channels, drives tourism, and creates pathways into regional and global markets.
Countries that punch above their economic weight do so not by accident, but by aligning sport with trade, culture, and enterprise. A jersey worn in Santiago, Montevideo, or Kingston is not just fabric; it is a mobile billboard for national identity.
But corporate sponsorship must move beyond logos on kits and banners at venues. Support should be tied to development plans, documents that show how a sport intends to move from national relevance to regional competitiveness and international visibility.
These plans should outline athlete pipelines, coaching development, competition exposure, governance standards, and measurable milestones. In return, sponsors gain alignment with excellence, discipline, youth development, and international exposure.
The TTHB has already gestured toward this future-thinking approach. Faced with withdrawal, it chose early transparency, succession planning, and alternatives such as regional invitational tournaments involving Barbados, Guyana, and Puerto Rico, ensuring players still gain international exposure.
That mindset, adaptive, outward-looking, and development-focused, is precisely what corporate partners should be looking to support.
There is also a wider economic argument that policymakers and boardrooms alike should not ignore. Sport contributes to Gross National Product through tourism, broadcasting, merchandising, events, and ancillary services.
A single successful regional tournament brings hotel nights, transport revenue, catering, media activity, and visibility that no traditional advertising campaign can replicate. When sport thrives, multiple sectors benefit.
What is required now is alignment. NSOs must present bankable visions, not survival pleas. Corporate Trinidad & Tobago must recognise that sport is not a cost centre, but a growth platform.
And the State must continue to play its role, not as sole financier, but as an enabler and regulator of a system that rewards planning, transparency, and performance.
The withdrawal of junior teams from international competition should be a wake-up call, not a footnote. It reminds us that talent without structure withers, and ambition without investment stalls.
If Trinidad and Tobago wants its athletes to stand taller on global stages, then its institutions, sporting, corporate, and governmental, must think bigger, plan longer, and act together because in the modern world, sport does not merely reflect a nation’s potential; it helps to create it.
