THE SPONSORSHIP

Sponsorship refers to the support given towards an event, person or activity using financial means or through the use of services or products. A sponsor is very similar with a benefactor as they provide support.  The benefits of sponsorship are that the sponsor can obtain brand awareness towards their organization. Increase their sales, or to help build their brand.  Sponsorship is very different than advertising, as sponsorship cannot specifically change the sponsoree’s product or event and requires outside elements to help make it successful unlike advertising.

However, in this report we will be talking about the sponsors of the Historic FIFA World Cup,  there have been a long list of sponsors since the acceptance of sponsors starting from the year 1982. However, after the 2006 FiFa World Cup in Germany, FIFA unveiled and started its new marketing and commercial Strategy, the three-tier Sponsorship Structure. The First level Tier, or Primary tier consists of FIFA Partners, the Secondary Tier refers to the World Cup Sponsors and the Third Tier are national supporters for each of the FIFA world cup events, which means that local companies on where the world cup are hosted are allowed to be sponsors.

The benefit of using this strategy is that a wide array of product category exclusivity, leaving each brand to properly and successfully distinguish itself from other competitive brands from the same product line or category, for example, If Coke-Cola is the official sponsor for the world cup, other competitors such as Pepsi or Dr.Pepper are not allowed to sponsor it as well.

The Main Sponsor for FIFA since 2006 are Adidas, Visa, Sony, Emirates, Hyundai&Kia Motors and Coca-Cola, these companies are the first tier sponsors in which they are help the development of football even after the world cup or any event affiliated with the world cup has ended. Coca-Cola being the highest in the hierarchy for the most amount of sponsorship funds given to FIFA.

In this Study, the focus will be mainly on the FIFA World Cup in Brazil hosted in the year 2014. Spending had increased from up to 40% from the previous world cup held in South Africa in 2010. FIFA’s official partner ADIDAS Kick off the first advertisement, of a video name “The Dream” which featured the likes of Luis Suarez, Lionel Messi and the brand new song released by Kanye West. A Week after the release of the video, Adidas also released a video, with legends of the game like David Beckham, Gareth Bale, Lucas Moura and Zinedine Zidane.

Other ways other companies are help sponsoring the world cup event are at least 8 Companies are paying the major Brazil Tv Network GLOBO a total of $600 million for an advertising spot or a tv presence during the duration of the games or anything related to soccer coverage. At around $75 million per each sponsor that eclipse any other event sponsored while the closest being the American Super Bowl.

What will each of the 8 companies get are a minimum of at least 1120 minutes of video insertions including 451 TV commercials that last for at least 30 seconds, quick visual mentions when announcers are discussing about the world cup games.  For other marketers who really wants to take on the world cup, Globo offers a separate package in which non-world cup sponsors can team up with official FIFA World Cup Sponsors ie, Coca-Cola, Ambe, Banco Itau and J&J to help cut cost and help share the profits and cost of each advertising spot. Apart ftom GLOBO, other companies such as Oi and Hyundai have also had arrangement with fifa towards other sources like bus sticker placement and banners across and around the stadium.