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The 2018 FIFA World Cup is short on sponsors across the board. But among smaller, local Russian brands, it’s a pariah.
At present, pitches have come in from seven of eight spots “FIFA partner” sponsors – brands like Nike and Visa. Two of the six spots for second-tier “World Cup Sponsors” remain unfilled. And on the local level, only two of a planned 20 regional World Cup sponsors have bought in. After a gaggle of corruption scandals, FIFA is just too toxic a brand in an age when sponsorship bares a political edge.
FIFA declared a financial loss of $369 million in 2016, and is likely to post further losses for 2017. The global governing body for soccer relies on World Cup years to float net profits from off-year expenses. But for 2018, the organization now aims for staying out of the red. And as each month before the games passes without a rush of new sponsorship, the sinking proposition becomes less appealing.
Within six months of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, all sponsorship roles had been filled, with heavy involvement by local sponsors who, though they don’t fund as robustly, hold a big role in creating in-country hype and driving preparations.
A new playing field
In the last few years, the politics that surround athletes, clubs, sponsors and fans broke into the sporting world with regularity.
In late November, the Chinese Football Association postponed a tour for its U20 squad in Germany after protesters unfurled Tibetan flags to meet the team in its first match. The Chinese team refused to play, delaying the match 25 minutes until the flags, which were brought by four Tibetan refugees and two German supporters, were taken down. The match was broadcast live in China.
The spate quickly escalated. Lu Kang, the Chinese foreign minister, demanded the German hosts show “mutual respect.” Reinhard Grindel, the president of the German Football Association, responded that “when you play in Germany, you also have to deal with the fact that anyone can express their opinion.”
In Saudi Arabia, an FC Barcelona jersey could technically catch fans a $200,000 fine and 15 years in jail. Qatar Airways, which has sponsored the club since 2011, is blacklisted in Saudi Arabia, which holds political ill towards the Qatari government. The Saudi Minister of Culture clarified that the law would not be enforced on Barcelona jerseys. But UEFA Champions League posters censored the jerseys, with white strips over the Qatar Airways logo.
In the United States, after NFL players kneeled during the national anthem to protest police brutality against African-Americans and caught the tweeted ire of Donald Trump, sponsors were put at odds. Mealy statements flowed from companies like Anheuser-Busch and Bose, where silence lingered in the absence of a statement from others like Visa, Verizon and Microsoft. Nike made headlines with an actual stance: “Nike supports athletes and their right to freedom of expression on issues that are of great importance to our society.”
The rise of stakeholders
The Chinese national anthem similarly became a political lightning rod in Hong Kong, where it is played for the Hong Kong national soccer team, and habitually booed at home. The Chinese Communist Party has since pushed a ban on disrespecting the flag to apply in Hong Kong, to little avail to still-booing Hong Kongers. But it is unlikely that Nike would maintain its Freedom of Expression platform here, says Nan Sato, a sports and entertainment lawyer with experience in American and Chinese markets.
“They probably chose the lesser of two evils, the route where they perceived less commercial damages,” said Sato, who now works out of Tokyo with Field R, a firm that works with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. “It’s a pretty cynical view. But my core theme about sponsorship is that they do this to increase their commercial value.”
In this case, where sponsors would consider China’s massive 1.37-billion-person consumer marketplace versus Hong Kong, a city of 7.34 million, the brand would lean towards profit. That would be bad publicity for the whole league, but while multinational, largely faceless sponsors like Nike can able hedge their statements, for smaller, regional sponsors, that pickle would be deadly.
Tokyo 2020 now seeks a stakeholder system where sponsors, broadcasters and governing bodies meet early, as equals. This means bringing governments, presenting partners, suppliers, broadcasters and international organizations, like FIFA or the International Olympic Committee, to the same table well before promotion begins.
“The value of stakeholder involvement is to get players involved early on so that each of them expresses their opinions and concerns,” she explained. “We can all together come up with a plan or solution for sporting events that will consider everyone’s interests and at the same time protect everyone’s rights.”
