CUP SPONSORS SNUB ‘CORRUPT’ FIFA
NEW YORK : FIFA, the global governing body for football, ordinarily enjoys huge revenue streams — in the hundreds of millions of dollars — from sponsorship deals attached to the world’s mostwatched sporting event, the World Cup. But less than a year before the next edition of the tournament, the organisation is having trouble finding companies willing to be a partner.
The sport is more popular than ever. What is different this time is FIFA’s reputation. Before Friday’s draw at Kremlin, along with a trial in a New York courtroom further battering its reputation, FIFA could be facing a significant financial shortfall.
Six months before the final draw for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, FIFA declared its sponsorship programme — which after television rights is the organisation’s most important revenue generator — “sold out.” This year, while FIFA has refilled its ranks of top-tier partners with firms in Russia, Qatar and China, only one of the 20 slots available to regional tournament sponsors has been claimed. In fact, one has to go back to 2011 to find the last new partner based in either Europe or the US — a one-tournament deal signed by Johnson & Johnson. That geographic spread tells its own story, according to Patrick Nally, a sports sponsorship executive who helped set up FIFA’s first international marketing programme four decades ago. “It’s not surprising it’s been and still is a toxic brand,” Nally said. “Unless you are from China or somewhere like that, where the fact FIFA is in court in New York and associated with corruption doesn’t matter, no corporation is going to consider it safe to get involved with FIFA.” FIFA did not respond to questions. In fact, Nally said, FIFA’s association with corrupt behaviour now runs so deep that he suggested the 113-year-old FIFA should consider a name change. “The word FIFA globally has got just the worst image in the world: If you are trying to sell the FIFA brand, if anything those four letters stand for corruption and it’s so unattractive.”