The latest changes to FIFA’s sponsorship strategy are eminently sensible.
The growth in popularity and commercial value of both the women’s game and gaming represent untapped potential for FIFA, who have been struggling for a number of years to grow the quantity and quality of their sponsors.
The new commercial structure aggregates the verticals of FIFA’s Women’s football and Esports/Gaming with its offering across the men’s game, offering vertical and horizontal access to brands, below the umbrella of FIFA Global Partnership.
The media release talks of the aspiration to offer ‘companies around the world with more tailored opportunities to partner with the sport of football, leverage the FIFA brand and support its competitions’ but FIFA’s CCO Kay Madati’s words cut through the corporate speak: ‘We recognised the need for a nimble and customisable commercial structure that enables brands big and small, global and local’. Which sounds very much like : we’re looking to create a structure which offers more breadth at both the top and the bottom.
The announcement doesn’t explain the re-slicing of assets, but it’s difficult not to imagine a very complicated scenario, as the new structure is effectively sharing assets between and across the three verticals. Clearly, FIFA’s three verticals have assets which are easily divisible – IP and right of association, imagery, access, tickets and hospitality, principally – but brand exposure remains the driver. Media space is of course finite and logo clutter is unhelpful, even in the metaverse.
FIFA THE WHAT?
The timing of the announcement is curious, landing in the middle of stalled talks with EA Sports about the future of the FIFA gaming licence.
The general opinion, reflected by Tariq Panja in his NYT article on the subject, is that for ‘millions of people around the world, the letters FIFA now represent not actual soccer but instead a one-word shorthand for the hugely popular video game series that has become a fixture in the lives of players as diverse as Premier League pros, casual fans and even gamers with no other relationship to the sport.’ As Tariq’s comment highlights, FIFA’s legal and commercial team have de facto left the FIFA brand unprotected in this context : to many, many people around the world, FIFA belongs to EA.
The talks revolve around financials, but also no doubt about the definition of the licence-holder rights. It’s easy to imagine how, despite the global success of FIFA (the game), FIFA (the org) might want to integrate dimensions of gaming more profoundly into its marketing and development plans. FIFA may have ambitious plans for eFIFA in the future, but without the backbone of FIFA (the game), future plans don’t represent current value and there is no clear or easy path to wrest back control.
Peter Jacobs of our partners at Livewire, who we turn to for support with esports and gaming clients or platforms, had this to say:
‘I’m not sure which games developer FIFA would turn to if it fell through with EA Sports, there aren’t many who could take on a rights package of that size – Konami’s new football title, which they rebranded this year has completely flopped – so it’s really unclear what’ll happen. I can imagine. If EA Sports releases a football game under a different name, it would signal a ‘new’ era of football titles. With the improvement of tech, it would likely be more adaptable and interactive in terms of creating modes, events, streams etc.’
So what explains the timing?
We have no inside line on this one. Negotiation pressure on EA? An attempt to boost sponsorship revenues before Qatar 2022? Political pressure to show positive momentum? We’ve love to hear your thoughts.
PROMOTIONAL RIGHTS, NOT PARTNERSHIP
But beyond the massive step of integrating two new sets of rights, and coating them with the sweetener of what is still the main event, this feels sensible rather than smart.
We’ve commented a few times (see Sponsorship Zen, 8 Insights) on IOC sponsorship, calling out the contrast between FIFA and the IOC and the fundamental learning there for FIFA. In contrast to FIFA, the IOC’s sponsor roster continues to grow and the IOC clearly appear to be more in control of that growth.
FIFA’s sponsorship strategy falls down because it continues to offer, in effect, promotional rights, not partnership potential.
Their solid belief in the supremacy of football as a world sport, buoyed by viewing figures, fanbases, regional and domestic leagues and competitions and participation numbers, perhaps blinds them to one obvious point.
IOC sponsors are not sponsoring the sport.
They’re sponsoring human values, the brand values of the IOC, which give every partner a platform of optimism, equality and innovation to talk from.
They’re also sponsoring a showcase. The Games funding model and the IOC’s control over this, allows it to embed TOPs as business partners of the OCOG. It also allows OCOGs to recruit brands on the basis of business relevance – to talk about their role in delivering the Games.
This transforms the relationship between Partner and the property. It connects brands to the delivery of the Games, and relationships with athletes and partnerships more directly related to sport simply serve to amplify and lend credibility to that connection. This is why the IOC continues to recruit and deliver value to brands both B2C and B2B and, despite the changes, FIFA’s sponsorship strategy will only produce more of the same.
Building a foundation which embeds values and a role for sponsors – that would be the smart thing.