*Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
ZIMMER BIOMET’s naming rights deal with Clare GAA has been about giving back to the local community as opposed to improving its business according to a senior member of management.
Last February, Zimmer Biomet and Clare GAA announced a three-year partnership resulting in the renaming of Cusack Park as Zimmer Biomet Páirc Chíosóg.
An option of extending the deal by a further two years remains on the table.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Director of Manufacturing with Zimmer Biomet, Tom O’Carroll said of the deal, “It is important for us to have a local presence”.
Internal staff came up with the idea of entering into the agreement with Clare GAA, he said. “We had to get corporate sign-off for that, we want to be associated and like to be associated with the GAA, we are a grass-roots organisation, it is a nice fit with our brand, a nice way to give back to the community in such a significant way.
“To be honest, the naming rights are almost secondary to supporting the community, it has been very successful, we’ve got a lot of recognition”.
One of the big highlights for Zimmer Biomet was hosting a blitz for children in the summer, an event which is expected to be held annually at the county grounds. “We had over 2,000 young children come to Zimmer Biomet Páirc Chíosóg in July where we had a football and hurling blitz, it was a blast, it was such an energy filling day, a lot of our own employees gave up their Saturday to co-ordinate and host this. Working with Clare GAA is an absolute pleasure, they are a great organisation to deal with, we impacted so many people and lives that day, some of our employees kids were there and we got to give something back to them, we’ve something similar planned for this year and hopefully it might become an annual thing”.
Tom added, “It’s not going to improve our business in any meaningful way by having the naming rights but it embeds us more in the community, it gives back to the community and the GAA is a worthy cause to give back to, it isn’t our only recipient of support and in many ways giving euros or dollars is the easy thing to do but we give a lot of time on big events which are very local”.
