Five star Danish badminton players and Olympic medallists have been thrown out of Denmark’s national team due to issues relating to sponsorship obligations.

Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen, the men’s doubles silver medallists at the 2012 Olympic Games, mixed-doubles duo Christinna Pedersen and Joachim Fischer, themselves 2012 Olympic bronze winners and Kamilla Rytter Juhl were the five ousted stars.

Cookie crumbling
The five players are all sponsored by the Danish cookie producer Kjeldsen Cookies and always play with the company’s logo on their kit. But the problem is that the national badminton association Badminton Danmark has a sponsorship agreement with competitor Danisa Cookies.

“We all have a personal sponsorship with Kjeldsen butter cookies, which we have had for the last two years,” Juhl said on Facebook. “In that agreement, it says we can’t represent any of Kjeldsen’s competitors, but since they only have very few, we couldn’t see any problems in that.”

“But now the association has signed a deal with Kjeldsen’s only competitor Danisa, whose only motive is to damage Kjeldsen, as the two are involved in a lawsuit against one another.”

According to Juhl, the players offered to play without sponsorship names on their clothing and even offered to compensate the association themselves.