On December 14, FIFA (hereinafter referred to as FIFA) ushered in changes in the sponsorship system, the most notable of which was FIFA's announcement that it would create a special sponsorship plan for women's football competitions and e-sports events for the first time after the end of the 2019-2022 business cycle, which means that in terms of sponsorship, women's football and e-sports will finally break away from the men's football "self-reliance portal".
What does the new sponsorship system look like?
This reform is the first time since 2013 that FIFA has introduced a new sponsorship cooperation system. Previously, most of the women's football and e-sports event resources were packaged and sold to sponsors as giveaways for men's football sponsorship rights. The highest level of FIFA's current sponsorship system is "FIFA Partners" – 6 to 8 brands are awarded top partner rights, including sponsorship rights for all FIFA events such as the Men's World Cup, the Women's World Cup, Youth Events, FIFA Esports Competitions, Low-level Futsal and Beach Soccer.
At present, the men's football team has the richest level of sponsorship system, under the FIFA partner, there is also a "World Cup Partner", this level of sponsors are given the global rights and interests of the men's world cup alone; under this, the men's football team also has a third level of "Regional Sponsor" (Regional Supporter), the so-called region refers to Europe, Central America, South America, Africa/Middle East and Asia 5 regions, Sponsorships at this level can reach a maximum of 20 seats, with the rights to the Men's Confederations Cup and World Cup in their respective regions.
In the current sponsorship system, the women's football team is far less sponsored than the men's football team. Under FIFA partners, the Women's World Cup has a "National Supporter" level, which is made up of domestic partners and suppliers, which is the only way for the brand to leave the men's football team to sponsor the Women's World Cup alone so far.
The reformed FIFA sponsorship system retains the highest level of sponsorship for FIFA partners. The biggest difference between it and the old system is that under the FIFA partner level, women's football and e-sports were separated, creating three independent vertical sponsorship areas of men's football, women's football, e-sports and games. The specific structure of the FIFA sponsorship system has also been updated to:
1. FIFA Partners tier: This tier remains FIFA's highest level sponsor and enjoys FIFA global partner status and category exclusivity;
2. World Cup Partners/Women's Football Partners/FIFAe Partners tier: This tier will receive global business rights for all national team events in their respectively sponsored verticals, while FIFAe partners will enjoy special promotion benefits for all competitions in the esports vertical;
3. Sponsors tier: they will receive global activation rights to the FIFA Women's World Cup, FIFA World Cup and/or all FIFAe vertical category competitions;
4. Tournament Supporters tier: These sponsors can do regional rights activations at the FIFA Women's World Cup, FIFA World Cup or FIFAe, while event support partners for men's and women's development tournaments such as THE FIFA U-20 and U-17 will enjoy more flexible rights.
The decoupling of women's football sponsorship has long been traced
In 2018, FIFA launched the first-ever women's global strategy for women's football, which strategically elevated the status of women's football, and this sponsorship system upgrade can also be seen as a continuation of this strategy. Kay Madati, FIFA's Chief Commercial Officer, said: "We have always been committed to making football a truly global, accessible and open sport, and we are aware of a flexible, customized business system that allows big and small brands, global brands and local brands to be deeply connected to football. The new sponsorship system will create more tailor-made marketing projects and market activation methods for partners. ”
Traditionally, football sponsorship has typically tied men's and women's football teams together. But since the success of the 2019 Fifa Women's World Cup in France, more and more brands have begun to set their sights on women's football. Before the FIFA revolution, women's football sponsorship had already begun to decouple from men's football.
In the case of UEFA, for example, it split the business development rights of men's and women's football teams two years ago. In December 2018, Visa became the first major sponsor to invest exclusively in women's football. At present, UEFA has 7 women's football sponsorship partners, of which 4 brands sponsor women's football separately. In 2019, Le Floc'h, then FIFA's chief commercial officer, said in an interview with Sport Business that he had taken note of UEFA's initiative to separate women's football sponsorship. However, FIFA has a longer sponsorship cycle than UEFA, so the time for FIFA to reform is not ripe.
Women's sport sponsorship of the self-sustaining portal has long spread to other sports, and this year the World Rugby Federation announced a partnership with Mastercard.
So as this sponsorship cycle draws to a close, FIFA is naturally quick to keep up. On the one hand, the women's football sponsorship self-reliance portal makes the sponsorship system rich and frugal, after all, the sponsorship amount of women's football events is still far lower than that of men's football; on the other hand, from a deeper level, the brand can break away from the traditional male perspective and tell a marketing story completely different from men's sports through women's sports.
For now, the brand seems to be quite buying into the independence of this women's football sponsorship, and a week after the official announcement of FIFA's new policy, credit card giant Visa announced that it has become the first women's football partner in FIFA's history .
It is worth mentioning that before the sponsorship system was self-reliant, FIFA had already tried to make the Women's World Cup independent from the men's football team in terms of media copyright. While sponsorship of the Women's World Cup in some markets is still part of the Package of Rights for the Men's World Cup and other events, the media rights to the Women's World Cup can already be sold separately in certain markets where women's sports and national teams are more popular, such as the United Kingdom and France.
Women's product brands such as personal care and beauty are natural sponsors of women's soccer. Previously, Sophie sponsored the Chinese women's football team, and P&G's Pantene and Secret sponsored the Australian and American women's football teams respectively.
Esports sponsorship of independence is the trend of the times
The esports industry has long since become a behemoth on a global scale, and its boundaries with traditional sports are increasingly blurred. As one of the most important sports IP in the world, there is no reason why football should not have a share in the esports industry. In fact, FIFA has always been quite passionate about esports, and the FIFA series of games has long since become one of the most successful games in the history of video games.
FIFA, which has made a lot of money through e-sports, has also long laid out e-sports strategically. Esports independence is already ahead of its branding, with FIFAe being a sub-brand for all of its esports and gaming activities.
FIFA also lost a lot of blood during the epidemic, with a loss of about $683 million in 2020, which has also become one of the incentives for its esports sponsorship to become independent. Similar to women's football, in this updated sponsorship system, under the highest level of FIFA partners, the "FIFAe Partner" level has been established, which has also become an independent sponsorship category at the same level as the "Men's World Cup Partner", enjoying the global advanced rights and interests of all FIFAe game events. The FIFAe Series Sponsor at the next level in the esports vertical is aimed at the global rights of a single FIFAe game event, while the FIFAe Tournament Supporter at the next level enjoys regional rights to specific FIFAe events.
The new FIFA sponsorship system will be activated for the first time at the 2023 Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
Extended Reading: