New Queens Park Rangers majority owner Tony Fernandes has a bit of a conflict of interest on his hands. That's because the subsidiary of a company he founded and owns is the sponsor of the English Premier League referees. The referee's shirts carry the logo of AirAsia, whose parent company is the Fernandes owned Tune Group Sdn. Bhd. So what does this mean going forward? It means you get lots of conspiracy theories. I know, exciting.
Let The Conspiracy Theories Start; New QPR Owner Sponsors Referees
“I actually conveniently forgot about it,” Fernandes, who is also AirAsia CEO, said. “I don’t think any referees are going to say ‘Tune is sponsoring me so I am going to make sure QPR win.’”
Now that is just decent and logical. Do you really thing that referees are thinking about AirAsia when they put the whistle to their mouths?
The AirAsia sponsorship was approved by the Professional Game Match Officials board and they maintain that there won’t be any conflict of interest, which is only sensible. Let’s ignore it then.
“There is no direct contact between Tune and PGMO officials, and this will continue,” PGMO said in a statement. “The sponsorship was agreed by the PGMO board, made up of an independent chairman and representatives from the Football Association, Premier League and Football League.”
So there really isn’t anything to this. That doesn’t mean you won’t hear conspiracy theories raining down when QPR gets the benefit of the call. Oh, I can’t wait.
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