[ecrea] New book on the growth of commercial sponsorship

The Trojan Horse: The Growth of Commercial Sponsorship (Bloomsbury, 
2013) by Professor Garry Whannel (University of Bedfordshire) and 
Professor Deborah Philips (University of Brighton).

 ‘From art and sport to education and health the authors describe how 
seemingly benevolent sponsorship is the Trojan Horse that has 
facilitated a creeping erosion of corporate interests?into the public 
sector. In a devastating critique of the demise of the welfare state, 
Phillips and Whannel document the colonisation of public space by 
commercial priorities that enables private enterprise to set the agendas 
of our schools, hospitals, care homes and surgeries with deleterious 
consequences. Wide-ranging, insightful and shocking to boot, this is a 
“must read” for anyone interested in the nature of public value and the 
hidden power of corporations.’

Natalie Fenton Professor of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, 
University of London, UK


‘Deborah Philips and Garry Whannel have given us a great gift--a book 
that manages to transcend its times, even as it captures them. They 
analyze the ruins of neoliberalism’s baleful influence on British life, 
from culture to sport to health. Blending political economy with 
cultural studies, The Trojan Horse expertly describes thirty years of 
struggle and mystification.’

Toby Miller Professor of Cultural Industries, City University London, UK 
and author of Makeover Nation



‘Commercial sponsorship now pervades our lives, intruding private 
interests into the management of our public and collective affairs at 
great social cost and with few economic benefits as?the weaknesses and 
failures of free-market economics become increasingly manifest. By 
demonstrating this in convincing detail, Deborah Philips and Garry 
Whannel’s broad-ranging and incisive study provides an invaluable 
service in re-asserting the principles of public-ness that need to be 
defended against the Trojan horse of privatisation. An important and 
timely book.’

Tony Bennett Research Professor in Social and Cultural Theory, 
University of Western Sydney, Australia



The Trojan Horse traces the growth of commercial sponsorship in the 
public sphere since ?the 1960s, its growing importance for the arts 
since 1980, and its spread into areas such as education and health. The 
authors’ central argument is that the image of sponsorship as corporate 
benevolence has served to routinize and legitimate the presence of 
commerce within the public sector. The central metaphor is of such 
sponsorship as a Trojan horse helping to facilitate the hollowing out of 
the public sector by private agencies, and private finance.

The authors place the study in the context of the more general 
colonization of the state by?private capital and the challenge posed to 
the dominance of neo-liberal economics by the?recent global financial 
crisis. After considering the passage from patronage to sponsorship and 
outlining the context of the post-war public sector since 1945, it 
analyses sponsorship in relation to Thatcherism, enterprise culture and 
the restructuring of public provision during the 1980s. It goes on to 
examine the New Labour years, and the ways in which sponsorship has 
paved the way for the increased use of private-public partnerships and 
private finance initiatives within the public sector in the UK.



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