By the time Miss Universe Mexico, Fatima Bosch, won the 74th Miss Universe competition in Thailand on the 21st of November 2025, the event had already reached global news, and for all the wrong reasons.
First, the police responded to a complaint filed by Nawat Itsaragrisil, chair of the local organising committee (LOC), that the global Miss Universe Organisation (MUO) had instructed contestants staying in Bangkok to shoot promotional content for a Philippines-based online casino-branded sponsor. Gambling and promoting gambling is, of course, illegal in Thailand.
Then, during a live event, Nawat Itsaragrisil publicly reprimanded Miss Universe Mexico, Fatima Bosch, leading to a walk-out of several contestants in solidarity. Itsaragrisil accused Bosch of failing to participate in certain promotional or sponsorship activities for Thailand. He allegedly called Bosch a “dumbhead” for following her national director rather than the host team’s directive.
The outburst struck a nerve because it involved the public shaming of a contestant in front of her peers and in front of running cameras, raising questions about respect, power dynamics and the professional treatment of participants.
However, in the sponsorship industry, debate quickly turned to the root of the problem: a lack of clear sponsorship policy and practices, exposing familiar fault lines in rights management, sponsorship delivery, and governing law. At the heart of the problem was a breakdown in sponsorship governance—specifically, unclear roles, misaligned expectations, and uncontrolled activation rights between the MUO and the LOC.
So how could these issues have been avoided? Below we’ve listed the specific issues at play and how to manage them, according to our tool, The Sponsorship Playbook.
Sponsorship rights
Large events normally have a strict hierarchy: The global rights holder, in this case MUO, controls global sponsors, and the LOC, Thailand, controls local sponsors and event-specific activations. In Thailand, the boundaries became blurred as MUO seemed to have activated the gambling sponsorship without full local alignment. The LOC, in turn, expected contestants to participate in their sponsored activities.
The solution: rights clarity must be contractual, granular and operational. The Sponsorship Playbook emphasises packaging rights into specific, measurable assets (branding, broadcast, hospitality, data, experiential) and pricing them with transparency so buyers and sellers know what they have bought and sold. Vague wording or oral assurances are invitations to dispute when live coverage and global partners begin to execute. Rights must be mapped to deliverables, deadlines and responsible parties in the contract.
Secondly: establish clear communication discipline between local and global rights holders. Commercial teams and broadcast partners must be fed the same brief, on the same cadence, with confirmed sign-offs. A single source of truth — shared schedules, signage plans and a live fulfilment tracker — prevents last-minute surprises that harm sponsors and the property alike. The Sponsorship Playbook’s activation and fulfilment checklists are practical tools to ensure every partner sees identical execution plans.
Activation and measurement
Promoting an online casino in Thailand where gambling promotion is illegal shows a failure to screen risks, a basic pillar of sponsorship management. In addition, the contestants were caught between MUO telling them to do one activation and the LOC telling them to do another. This friction often arises when rights are oversold or when sponsor inventory overlaps, also called rights collision. Miss Mexico’s reprimanding wasn’t really about her. It was about competing sponsor demands, and she became the pressure point.
The solution: the MUO, LOC and all sponsors must jointly develop an activation plan identifying key performance indicators (KPIs), audience engagement metrics, and content integration opportunities. A clear deadline for post-event reporting, including media valuation and engagement results, should also be established.
Crisis management
Nawat Itsaragrisil and the MUO both issued apologies, however, critics have demanded more accountability and measures to avoid similar incidents in the future.
The solution: crisis thinking must be embedded into commercial processes. The Sponsorship Playbook dedicates sections to “seeing the unforeseen” and “activation — crisis” because commercial obligations continue even when events go off script. Ambush prevention, contingency signage plans, and rapid fulfilment workstreams allow sponsors to maintain visibility and protect brand safety during disruption.
Other protections that should have been in place concern dispute resolution and governing law, and mutual reputation protection. According to The Sponsorship Playbook, disputes should first be resolved through good-faith negotiation between authorised representatives. Failing resolution, disputes should be referred to mediation in Thailand, under Thai law, before any formal legal proceedings commence. In addition, The Sponsorship Playbook also states that both parties should act in good faith to protect and enhance each other’s reputation. Both parties should avoid public statements detrimental to the other, and both should agree to cooperate fully in managing any public relations issues related to the sponsorship.
We would like to make clear that we have NO contractual or commercial relationship with the Miss Universe Organisation (MOU) or the local organising committee (LOC) or suggest any such relationship.
Paul Poole (South East Asia) Co., Ltd. is an independent marketing consultancy based in Bangkok, Thailand specialising in commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing, working with both rights holders and brands - acting as a catalyst by bringing them together and maximising the relationship.
We have packaged, sold and managed sponsorship and partnership opportunities for a wide range of rights holders and worked with many of the world’s leading brands to source and engage the right sponsorships and partnerships for them to maximise.
