What does a winter FIFA World Cup mean for your marketing plans?

With the last qualification places for this year’s World Cup finalised in the next few days, players and fans alike will soon be turning their attention to a new season unlike any other. 

With the tournament taking place through November and December, multiple domestic leagues will take an extended break for the duration of the competition for the first time ever and football fans around the world will bring in a new year off the back of a festival of football. 

For marketeers, this turns traditional end of year plans on their head and presents new opportunities for what could be a once in a lifetime football phenomenon.

Whether on the ground in Doha or activating in markets around the world, here are three of our top considerations for this year’s World Cup. 

Christmas Spirit

With the tournament taking place in the build up to Christmas, up to 40% of fans around the world believe they will bring forward gifts this year so that friends and family can enjoy them during the World Cup. Whether that’s a new flat screen to watch all 64 matches on, or the latest Argentina shirt, this will mean a change in traditional spending patterns for many.

Furthermore, the traditional Christmas party season will have a sprinkle of football unlike ever before. 

There is an opportunity for brands, federations, broadcasters, players, teams (the list goes on) to integrate themselves more heavily than usual in to a period of the year when for many markets around the globe, personal expenditure is at its most free flowing and when colleagues and friends gather most frequently. 

Where will we watch?

A winter World Cup flips the traditional ways in which nations have consumed the tournament. 

For fans in the southern hemisphere who are usually in the midst of their coldest months during the traditional June & July schedule, this World Cup represents an opportunity to consume the competition in a way unlike ever before. This means that fans who who would usually never dream of gathering outdoors to watch the tournament may well be afforded the opportunity to attend large screenings in parks and public spaces, or simply enjoy a BBQ at home with friends. 

Don’t miss this. It could well be a once in a generation opportunity to put your brand at the heart of an experience that fans may never see again. 

A holiday for the region

For brands with aspirations on making an impact across the Middle East, this World Cup is a great opportunity to speak to the region beyond Qatar. Thanks to the tournament taking place during the Middle East’s cooler months, many of the 1.5m fans anticipated to travel in to Qatar will be from neighbouring countries, with Arab fans saving their annual leave for a trip of a lifetime.

This has been further cemented by the recent announcement that Qatar Airways has partnered with a host of regional airlines to provide 24 hour shuttle service flights from markets including UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman and Kuwait throughout the tournament.

With schools in Qatar closed during the tournament and many people enjoying limited working hours, the addition of hundreds of thousands of fans travelling in from across the region creates the perfect opportunity to speak to the Middle East as a whole.

The number one thing fans want to see at Qatar 2022

Tomorrow the draw for the FIFA World Cup will take place in Doha when fans will find out who their team will face in the early stages of the competition. It is estimated 1.5m fans from around the globe will fly in to Qatar for the tournament later this year, for the first World Cup in the Middle East.

When fans hit the tarmac in Doha, for many it will be their first experience of travel to the Arab region, it may well be their first international travel since before the pandemic. 

It makes sense then that the number one thing the fans we polled from across the globe want support with is connectivity; namely access to free Wi-Fi. Just a few percentage points behind was support with communicating with friends and family back home.

In a post-pandemic world (fingers crossed) and in a new part of the world for many, the ability to access information, communicate freely and quickly, at no cost is paramount to fans who may be cautious of what to expect in Qatar.

With navigation support and assistance respecting local culture in second and third place respectively, this further emphasizes the point that there will be 1.5m people arriving in Qatar later this year looking for help. 

This is a huge opportunity for brands to put themselves at the heart of what matters most to fans and enhance their World Cup experience. 

However, understanding your audience is key, and whilst globally these are the top areas fans are looking for support in, there are huge swings when we focus on particular countries. 

For example, whilst free wi-fi access would be greatly appreciated by 60% of Argentinians, only 25% of British fans feel the same way. Similarly, 44% of Brazilians are looking for assistance with respecting local culture, whilst only 14% of Americans concur.

Understanding these nuances should be the top priority to any brands wanting to integrate themselves in to fans’ World Cup experience. We’ve got the data to enable those insights.  

FIFA text message to 3m Qatar residents is a reminder to brands around the globe

FIFA text message to 3m Qatar residents is a reminder to brands around the globe 

Last week, FIFA took it upon themselves to send a text message to every single person in Qatar with a “friendly reminder” that all official tournament emblems, logos and even the words “WORLD CUP” are exclusively owned and licenced by world football’s governing body and that any use of them without permission is illegal. 

This is nothing new, and by sending upwards of three million text messages to residents of Qatar, FIFA are actively trying to get ahead of an issue which they face every four years.

As laid out on their website, FIFA in partnership with the host country, implement a number of strategies to limit the number of copyright infringements and what they call “ambush marketing”. In simple terms, this is any sort of marketing by non-FIFA partners on the ground in Qatar who aim to take advantage of the tournament- not just those who actively aim to ambush a live event. 

One of the steps FIFA take is to enact what they call “Commercial Restriction Areas” around World Cup stadiums and other official FIFA sites. In the words of FIFA:

“A CRA is not curtained by a physical fence but an imaginary line that is outlined on a map and included in local laws in order to provide additional legal protection against prohibited marketing activities around the stadium, unauthorised traders, counterfeit goods and ticket touts.!”

Qatar 2022 has been widely billed as the “most compact” World Cup of all time, with each of the stadiums within touching distance of the capital Doha, which stands at only 132 km² -thanks Wikipedia! The furthest distance between two stadiums is only 75km, compared to 1,546km at the last World Cup in Russia.

All of this to say; space is at a premium. With only 259 days to go until the first ball is kicked, unsurprisingly our team in Doha are seeing locations being snapped up with many of the more obvious choices booked up long ago.

However, Doha is a rapidly growing city and that means new opportunities are opening up every day. To take advantage of these you need to understand how Qatar works. Fortunately, with 30+ years of experience on the ground, our team are uniquely placed to provide insight and creative solutions on the Middle East’s first World Cup.

Lusail, the district which will host the final, didn’t exist when Qatar won the bid. Our team in Doha have not only witnessed the change, they’ve been part of it.

The Launch of The Football Collective

Henry Chappell, Founding Partner of Pitch Marketing Group 

There is no bigger event than the FIFA World Cup. It brings people together from all around the world, and creates a deluge of drama, excitement and emotion like nothing else. 

Because of this, it provides a unique global marketing opportunity for brands, federations and media organisations.

But this opportunity is not without its challenges.

Understanding the real passion that drives football fans for one.  Being able to deliver activations in the host country of a World Cup is another. 

Not to mention creating a distinctive marketing campaign that can work across multiple markets and cut through the clutter of rival brands, all of whom will be competing for attention on the world’s biggest pitch.

It is for these reasons that we decided to partner with SDIsports to form Football Collective. Together, we can provide holistic, turnkey marketing solutions to World Cup sponsors, sponsors of national teams, media companies and other brands seeking to reach audiences through football.

SDI has the local market expertise and resources in market in Qatar and North America. Whilst we have 20 years of experience creating and activating sponsorship campaigns in football for some of the world’s biggest brands.

It really is a case of 1 plus 1 equalling 3.

We are looking forward to both the opportunity and the challenge.

Nigel Scott, Chief Creative Officer at SDIsports 

When I first met Henry over 20 years ago, I never would have thought that one day we would be launching something as exciting at the Football Collective together, and yet here we are.  

Who can blame us, with the next two FIFA World Cup™ tournaments happening in our collective backyards of Qatar and North America?  There are no other agencies dedicated to the beautiful game that can say that, no other agencies that understand the three way relationship between fans, federations and football in quite the way we do (thanks in no small part to our Fanthropologist) and no other agency that can be relied upon to be culturally sensitive and creatively relevant when it comes to operating in Qatar.

As soon as the opportunity came about to establish an alliance, Henry & Pitch were my first and only choice as a partner.  I instinctively knew that I needed his kind of brain and the company’s knowledge and network to make this idea a reality.  Operating in Qatar is such a specialized role and SDI Sports needed a more global perspective to be able to deliver on the great opportunity that FIFA World Cup™ provides.

And so here we are, launching The Football Collective with two years to go until the main event.