2006 FIFA World Cup sponsorship

Corporate sponsorship during the 2006 World Cup has been a major source of revenue for FIFA, but it has also led to criticism for overly commercializing the event and allocating too many game tickets to sponsors, as well as for prohibitive actions against non-sponsor advertising around the stadiums. FIFA has defended its policies by pointing out that all of its profits from the World Cup are invested back into worldwide football.] Budweiser is the only sponsor with non English writing on its billboards.

During the first round match between the Netherlands and Côte d'Ivoire, over 1,000 Dutch fans who arrived at the stadium wearing orange lederhosen were forced to remove their trousers because the lederhosen had the logo of Dutch brewery Bavaria. Bavaria, who had sold the lederhosen as part of an offer, was accused by FIFA of "ambush marketing" at the expense of American beer maker Budweiser who had paid millions of Euro to sponsor the competition and for the title of "Official Beer of the 2006 World Cup."cite web|url=http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/story/0,,1800885,00.html|title=The new World Cup rule: take off your trousers, they're offending our sponsor |publisher=Guardian|date=2006-06-19|accessdate=2006-06-22]

In April 2007, MasterCard sued FIFA for reneging on a World Cup credit card sponsorship deal after it had awarded the sponsorship to VISA. MasterCard had the right of first refusal to sponsor the 2010 and 2014 World Cups but was not given the opportunity to do so. On Dec. 7, 2006, MasterCard won its US federal lawsuit against FIFA. The judge issued a ruling stating that FIFA had breached the contract and that MasterCard was entitled to sponsor the next two World Cups. The judge also brought to light that FIFA officials had repeatedly lied to both MasterCard and VISA during the negotiations.

Ticket availability

FIFA allocated approximately one in six of the 3.1 million World Cup tickets to its sponsors. Each of the fifteen official partners received 25,000 World Cup tickets, while the six national partners split a total of 115,000. This has led to FIFA being heavily criticized for not making enough tickets available to fans. [cite web|url=http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1754849,00.html|title=The Great World Cup Ticket Scandal|publisher=Guardian Unlimited|date=2006-04-16|accessdate=2006-07-09] cite web|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2005/12/22/sfnwcp22.xml|title=England Fans Could Be Forced to Pay ₤526 for a World Cup Ticket|last=Bose|first=Mihir|publisher=The Telegraph|date=2005-12-22|accessdate=2006-07-09]

ee also

*2006 FIFA World Cup
*FIFA
*FIFA World Cup

References