Huawei to finish oldest major sporting sponsorship deal in the world with Australian rugby league team Canberra Raiders

Chinese telecom giant Huawei reported on Monday it is finishing its oldest major sporting sponsorship deal in the world when it closes its agreement with Australian rugby league team Canberra Raiders following nine years, accusing a “continued negative business environment.”

Australia has banned the world’s biggest creator of switching gear and a significant cell phone brand from inclusion in crucial national communication infrastructure in recent years, while China has tightened up pressure for an Australian policy inversion.

Huawei will end its financial support of the Raiders toward the finish of the current National Rugby League season. The grand final is on Oct. 25.

A year ago, Huawei renewed its sponsorship deal for two years until the finish of the 2021 season.

“The continued negative business environment is having a larger than originally forecasted impact on our planned revenue stream and therefore we will have to terminate our major sponsorship of the Raiders at the end of the 2020 season,” a Huawei statement said.

The Raiders is the only team in the national competition situated in the Australian capital Canberra, the center of government and national policy-making.

Huawei’s milestone decision to sponsor the team in 2012 came months after the government prohibited the organization on security grounds from involvement in the rollout of Australia’s National Broadband Network in 2011.

The sponsorship was viewed as an attempt to improve Huawei’s public picture according to legislators and senior bureaucrats who barrack for the Canberra team.

Raiders board member Dennis Richardson, a previous head of the Defense Department and the main domestic spy agency, Australian Security Intelligence Organization, had been a vocal supporter of Huawei’s sponsorship deal.

Huawei Australia’s chief corporate affairs officer Jeremy Mitchell recommended that a decision of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government in 2018 to restrict the organization from Australia’s 5G networks was at least part of the sponsorship decision.

“Even after the Turnbull government banned us from 5G we managed to find the resources to continue the sponsorship, but we just can’t financially support it any longer,” Mitchell said in a statement.

The announcement makes no notice of the coronavirus pandemic’s effect on the business environment.

Raiders CEO Don Furner said the team was “very sad” to lose its significant sponsor. Neither Huawei nor the team has ever made public the estimation of the sponsorship.

“The Canberra Raiders and Huawei have enjoyed a fantastic partnership for nearly a decade – they have been by far our longest-serving major sponsor,” Furner said in a statement.

China has made Australia lifting its restriction on Huawei on essential infrastructure a condition of turning around strained bilateral relations. The diplomatic relationship has since intensified because Australia required an independent inquiry into the origins of and international reactions to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Raiders have gotten more successful in recent years. The Raiders were runners up in a year ago’s premiership and are positioned fifth in the current season. They last won a premiership in 1994.

Huawei is at the center of a significant dispute between Washington and Beijing over technology and security. U.S. authorities state Huawei is a security chance, which the organization denies, and are campaigning European and different partners to stay away from its technology as they upgrade to next-generation networks.

China, in the interim, is attempting to urge Europeans to ensure access to their markets for Chinese telecom and technology organizations.

Huawei is enduring as Washington strengthens a campaign to slam the door on admittance to foreign markets and components in its raising fight with Beijing.

European and other phone carriers that purchased Huawei gear notwithstanding U.S. pressure are eliminating it from their networks. Huawei got a flicker of good news when it passed rivals Samsung and Apple as the No. 1 cell phone brand in the quarter finishing off with June on account of sales in China, however, demand abroad is plunging.