World Cup disorder

The Guardian, 30 May

The World Cup is an engrossing display of skill, ingenuity, fallibility. It is also a huge economic enterprise. This year’s matches will be televised in 189 countries. The final will be watched by more people than any other sporting contest in history. In an era of media fragmentation, the FIFA spectacle offers businesses an unrivaled global platform.

It’s estimated that $1 billion will be spent on World Cup-related
advertising, boosting annual ad revenues by a full percentage point. The
Centre for Economics and Business Research claims that as a result of the
Cup ?1.25 billion could be pumped into the UK economy alone. In Japan,
predictions are even more extravagant, with talk that overall spending will
increase by $4 billion.

Even in countries not represented in Germany, there will be massive interest
in the Cup. Football-related marketing activity is expected to account for
more than half of what consumers see and hear just prior to and during the
event in China, Bolivia, Chile, Hungary, Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela.

In India, football’s toehold is relatively weak. Even the final of the World
Cup will attract a smaller audience than a major cricket match. Yet the
price of a ten second advertising slot will be the same, because football
enables advertisers to reach a target market: young urban males, among whom
the game has become fashionable. However, in Bangladesh (as in neighbouring
West Bengal) football has deeper roots, and millions will passionately
support Brazil, which has become a kind of proxy side for Bengalis.

Unlike India, Bangladesh or China, the US does have a team in the World Cup.
Yet the event will generate less interest in the US than almost anywhere
else. In 2002, only 3.9 million Americans tuned in to the final, compared to
95 million who watch the Superbowl. Nonetheless, there is a burgeoning
audience for the Cup among the US’s 42 million strong Hispanic population.
Significantly, even in the US itself, Nike sells more Mexican than US
replica team shirts.

Despite the indifference of the bulk of their domestic market, US
corporations have made a substantial investment in the Cup. Coca Cola,
Gillette, Mastercard, Yahoo, McDonald’s, and Budweiser have each forked out
out between $40 and $60 million for an official sponsorship. Bud is
cheerfully exploiting the popular image of American footballing ignorance
with its British campaign strapline, “You do the football, we’ll do the
beer.”

What’s called brand clutter in the trade is a source of bewilderment for
punters and anxiety for advertisers, especially for official sponsors who
fear it devalues their direct investment. FIFA, like other international
sports authorities, has been aggressive in its efforts to eradicate “ambush
marketing”, pressing governments to pass legislation protecting the
exclusive use not only of trademarked names but also of “associated” words
and symbols. Thus, the sheer scale of monetary investment in the event
threatens freedom of expression and leads in effect to the privatisation of
a public asset.

A recent report from Oxfam, ‘Offside! Labor Rights and Sportswear Production
in Asia’, reminds us that while Nike pays $16 million a year to the
Brazilian team, the mostly female Asian workers who make the gear trumpeted
by the players are paid as little as ?2.50 per day. Those who seek to
unionise face intimidation or dismissal. An Adidas supplier in Indonesia
where workers receive 60 cents an hour recently sacked 30 union members who
took part in a legal strike for higher pay.

The economics and demographics of the World Cup suggest that globalisation
is less a uniform wave than an irregular maelstrom, riven by cross-currents.
Capital and labour flow at different rates in different directions, as do
images and ideas. Paradoxically, globalisation turns national identity into
a prize commodity. For their own reasons, corporate and media interests in
this country will seek to channel emotion (and spending) into support for
the England team. Great numbers will follow the event not because they love
football but because England is in it, and they have been persuaded that
England’s Cup run is important to them. Inevitably, political forces – some
mainstream, some on the far right – will seek to exploit that heavily hyped
attachment.

One of the things that makes the World Cup compelling, sometimes disturbing,
is the way the fundamentally trivial, harmless realm of sport (where
accident and idiosyncracy reign) acquires an aura of immense consequence.
The pointlessly beautiful (beautifully pointless) game seems burdened with a
vast weight of financial, cultural, political import. The amazing thing is
that it somehow survives.