World Cup is a brand risk

World Cup is a brand risk

So, if it’s not sport sponsorship that’s to blame, what is going on?

Clearly the long and painful exit of Sepp Blatter as president hurt FIFA’s reputation. A series of investigations and arrests have merely added to the organisational intrigue swirling around FIFA’s Swiss headquarters.

Several different national police forces are still investigating FIFA executives and if you

Google ‘FIFA’ you are as likely to read something about money laundering, fraud or international crime as you are to see the words ‘football’ or ‘tournament’.

That’s a problem for big brands because brand safety has become an enormous issue in marketing. You cannot spend millions protecting your image, trademark and reputation and then do anything other than go bananas when your brand is presented in a compromising position by a company you are paying to promote it.

To some degree, FIFA has also scored an own-goal with its decision making. How exactly FIFA executives managed to decide that Qatar – a country with a population of less than three million and an average summer temperature of more than 40 degrees celsius – would make a better host for the 2022 World Cup than America, Japan, Korea or Australia boggles the mind. But one thing is certain: if Russia has proven problematic for sponsor money, just wait for Qatar 2022.

That’s an issue now because FIFA relies on long term partners such as Coca-Cola and Visa to continue their sponsorships across many World Cup tournaments.

It’s ironic that a tournament that has proven so successful in the past in building brand

equity for a multitude of companies is now struggling because, beyond the issues of probity, financial transparency and ethics, it completely forgot about its own reputation.

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