Huge Audiences, Vuvuzelas And Jabulanis, Ambush Marketing Resulting In A South Africa-Netherlands Diplomatic Spat And A Fired TV Pundit – And That Was Just Week One Of The World Cup!

Philip M. Stone June 17, 2010 Follow on Twitter

The world is football (soccer) mad. There’s no denying it. For many World Cup participating countries, although still not the US, when their games are on TV more than half the population watch. Note we particularly say watch since hearing is another matter as we all welcomed to the land of the vuvuzela.

Some of the TV stats are amazing. It’s said that 74% of Germans watched their team thrash Australia 4-0 in their opening match. In Britain and France more than half the population watched their teams and even in the US ESPN reports it audiences are up 75-80% over four years ago although in total population terms it’s still small potatoes. The opening Mexico-South Africa match, incidentally, had higher viewership in the US on Spanish language stations than in English which says a whole lot about America still being the melting pot of nations. Even China, that is not competing, pulls in around 24 million viewers. Watch out for the July 11 final to draw the largest international audience in TV history.

And then there is the vuvuzela. Tuning in to the opening match and one was overwhelmed by that loud continuing buzz that nearly overcame the commentary. Yes, the vuvuzela was in full blast and it has created a global broadcast problem. There’s no denying it is part of African culture and Africa are hosts so banning it would be impolite to say the least, but on the other hand we would like to hear the commentary.

Some broadcasters hurriedly brought in those old-fashioned microphones that commentators used to have to hold very close to the mouth and thus much of the vuvuzelas disappeared. On the Internet the geeks soon came up with technical solutions on how the public itself with simple software could easily block the horn drones that were coming in at 233 Hz with harmonic overtones at 466 Hz, 932 Hz, and 1864 Hz.  Finally Host Broadcast Services accepted that something had to be done and said was offering an audio feed that doubles the number of filters to keep the noise down. Assuming Host makes both audio feeds available, then for analog in those countries utilizing two-channel sound that’s fine – those who want the feel of being there with all the blaring could tune into a natural sound channel and those who don’t want the noise can select the sub audio channel carrying the heavily filtered audio.  Digital broadcasters can use the red button and similar. That should keep most everyone happy.

FIFA didn’t really seem to care that much about the noise, but a group of 36 women wearing identical orange mini dresses at the Netherlands-Denmark match got their faces red with rage. This was blatant ambush marketing, it said, and had to be stopped. Budweiser is the official World Cup beer sponsor and that means no other beer company gets any marketing within a FIFA venue, but Dutch beer company Bavaria had smartly been running a campaign giving away the dresses with six-packs leading up to the World Cup so for a Dutch TV audience seeing those women grouped together was a pretty neat subliminal message. But FIFA wasn’t having any of that.

Stewards expelled the women, but then the police detained them for a couple of hours and since there were three Dutch nationals involved the Dutch Foreign Ministry wasn’t having any of that and demanded an explanation. The police responded by charging two of the Dutch women who they said were the ring leaders with conducting unlawful commercial activities and a court Wednesday confiscated their passports while giving them each bail of 10,000 rand ($1,300, £885, €1,065) with the case postponed for a week. That may give time for either cooler heads to prevail or for a full blown diplomatic crisis to erupt.

The Dutch foreign minister probably spoke for her entire nation when she exclaimed, “It is outrageous that the two women have a jail term hanging over their heads for wearing orange dresses in a football stadium." Maxime Verhagen continued, "If South Africa or FIFA wants to take a company to task for an illegal marketing action, they should start judicial procedures against the company and not against ordinary citizens walking around in orange dresses." The Dutch are not impressed either by the South Africans not charging the 33 South African women who were also involved.

Well, there seems little doubt the beer company did provide the dresses to the women but there was no writing at all on the front of the tops. Just plain orange. Can’t get much more Dutch than that!  FIFA certainly appears to be using a South African elephant to crush a Dutch beer can but FIFA seems to believe if you don’t crush anything that moves illegally then others will try it on, too. So besides the South African government action against the ladies FIFA says it “has filed charges against the organizer of the ambush marketing stunt pulled between the Netherlands-Denmark match at Soccer City two days ago.”

Everyone knows that at a Dutch game every supporter is going to be wearing some orange clothing, if not everything orange, so wearing an orange mini dress is against FIFA rules? It seems the dresses did have the name on the beer company on the back but the TV cameras wouldn’t have picked up on that, although having that name was a no-no. What it all goes to show is how sensitive FIFA is to ambush marketing because there are big bucks at stake.

The British ITV commercial network has turned purple, too, with embarrassment because of those orange dresses. Why a British network? Well, FIFA tracked down the ticket allocation for the seats the ladies occupied and lo and behold it turns out they were provided to ITV that in turn gave/sold them to one of its commentators – we should say now a former commentator -- on the condition they would be given to family and friends but under no circumstances could they be sold. ITV immediately fired the pundit in question. The Dutch beer company claims it got the tickets via “normal channels”.

Ambush marketing of another sort has worked out great for Nike, much to the chagrin of official sportswear and equipment sponsor Adidas. Nike’s great three-minute ad which aired before the World Cup in many countries has caused more buzz than Adidas is getting.

And it is not helping Adidas that the England team is loudly complaining that it is the only team that didn’t get the new World Cup Jabulani ball to practice with until just 15 days before the tourney began. Adidas may not be getting a fair shake there for it seems the ball did get delivered to England at the same time as other participating countries got it, but England and its Premier League have contracts with other ball makers which could have had something to do with the ball not seeing the English light of day until its Austrian training camp.

None of this would normally cause such a fuss except everyone seems to agree this new ball sometimes reacts very strangely – could that be why the England goalkeeper gave the US its goal -- and the last thing Adidas needs is a claim like that in one of its prime markets.  FIFA is defending Adidas as best it can saying the ball was "tested" and "approved". Adidas does admit high altitude can affect the way the ball behaves in flight -- the England-US game was played at Rustenburg, 1403 meters (4,600 feet) above sea level – so Adidas says players should have practiced with it more. Which is England Manager Fabio Capello’s point, too, if only he had the ball. Were those competing English ball contracts the real blame for the England squad not getting the ball earlier for training?  A balls-up?

All of this, and there’s still three weeks to go!

See also in ftm Knowledge

The Games People Watch

Media and sports are a powerful combination. Together they capture huge audiences and considerable money. This ftm Knowledge file looks at the competition from football rights battles and cycling coverage with new media to the Olympic Games. 60 pages PDF (September 2009)

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