Idan Ofer clearly has a love of football. The billionaire shipowner does, after all, own a majority stake in Portuguese top-tier league FC Famalicao and a significant stake in Spanish premier league club Atletico Madrid.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Ofer’s Eastern Pacific Shipping has now become an official sponsor of FC Imabari, a football club based in the Japanese city of the same name best known in the shipping world for its big shipyard.
The club’s top team play in the J3 League, Japan’s third tier of professional football, but the club also has a stated mission to increase its city’s football population and revitalise the local community through its academy and women’s league.
“We are thrilled to announce our partnership with FC Imabari as part of our ongoing commitment to community development and support for local sports initiatives,” EPS Japan managing director Hayasaka Yosuke said.
“This sponsorship represents our dedication to fostering strong connections within the communities we serve and underscores our belief in the power of sports to unite and inspire,” he said in a statement released by the company.
The statement highlighted how this sponsorship “underscores EPS’ dedication to supporting local sports initiatives” and its ongoing “commitment to the communities it serves” and how the partnership “represents a meaningful alliance between two entities deeply rooted in their respective communities”.
Corporate social responsibility reasons aside, everyone on the shipping giant’s home turf of Singapore knows EPS’ senior leadership are avid sporting buffs and sports are deeply ingrained in the company culture. Chief executive Cyril Ducau, for example, is a major force on the city-state’s cycling circuit.
Therefore, EPS often incorporates sports into its efforts to give back to the community — its biannual Around The World (ATW) fundraiser for example. Participants at sea and ashore collectively walk, run or cycle 100,000 km — about two and a half times the circumference of the Earth — to raise money for worthy charitable causes.
ATW 2022 saw more than 5,000 participants raise SGD 1.5m ($1.1m) for The Mission to Seafarers, and with plans for ATW 2024 underway, the company hopes to beat that amount this year.
