Sportsmanship and Business

By Jack Furlong

Founder/President/CEO

In the world of capitalism, there is always an interesting line between legality and morality in the quest to obtain the almighty dollar.  Capitalism is a competition between businesses driven by incentive to produce a quality product or service for the purpose of making a profit and thus surviving.  The ambiguity in how that is achieved is always subject to examination.
 
Equally ambiguous is how to marry the pursuits of a for-profit business with a non-profit endeavor.  When an altruistic goal influences the decisions of a business, it’s always interesting to see how different people make decisions that are in the best interest of both the business and its people as well as the pursuit of doing good.
 
Consider the trivia nights that OSIP runs.  We host these events to make money for our charity while also trying to provide a practical application of good sportsmanship in a common competitive setting.  Doing so requires the cooperation of another entity, usually a business like a restaurant, bar, brewery, social club, or similar that is seeking to increase revenue with more foot traffic.
 
From our start of this endeavor approximately ten years prior to the present day, there have been about twenty different venues that have contracted us for trivia nights.  As the weather warms into the second quarter of 2026, we can report that we currently only have contracts with two venues for trivia.  That means there have been a lot of failed endeavors!  About 90% of our trivia nights are no more.
 
There are plenty of explanations as to why certain things don’t work.  Our trivia nights have evolved significantly over ten years, attempting to always find ways to improve or serve others in a more positive way.  But no matter how much we look internally at where we can do better, sometimes we have no choice but to look outwards at the choices made by the venues.
 
Arriving at the conclusion of “this isn’t on us” is not done lightly.  It takes critical thinking and reflection, sometimes even guided by spirituality.  It can require a leap of faith that has the power to remove the burdens of guilt and shame.  And it is done under the guise of having personal responsibility be the driving force behind what is equally profitable and good for the mission.
 
We at OSIP know that our trivia nights are a good product, evidenced by the analytics we record showing the number of participants and the inquiries we make into whether the host business was profitable.  Even if we only have two contracts, we know those contracts flourish.  When comparing the numbers of the two contracts to the other 90% of failed attempts, it’s easy to identify evidence of what the for-profit venues could have done better for a greater chance of success.  Again, this does not exclude us from self-reflection, but if it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck…
 
Capitalism aside, though, it hurts when a venue that no longer hosts us tries something new using words or advertisements that infer that our product was bad.  Recently, a venue where we no longer host trivia decided to contract someone else to host trivia, essentially as a replacement.  This alone is fair game in the world of capitalism.  However, the advertisements used were interpreted as subtly taking a jab at us.  They included the phrases “best trivia ever” and “trivia that doesn’t suck.”  Although the claim from the venue is that these phrases were part of the marketing campaign provided by the new company contracted, an argument can be made that perception dictates reality, even if the original content was not intended to offend.
 
Look:  we live in a world where a defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  We would rather let a guilty man go free than to put an innocent man in prison.  We allow immoral loopholes in all facets of our industries because they are required parts of how our industries work.  Consider how insurance companies are allowed to deny legitimate claims because of the small subset of fraud that requires an appeal process to exist.  Is it moral?  No.  Is it legal?  You bet.  When we switch the context back to simple capitalism and ask the same questions, the answers remain the same.  The true question becomes whether we can rise above such behavior and conduct ourselves appropriately in the name of good sportsmanship.  Capitalism is a contest, so the same rules of sportsmanship apply.