Who is going to win the World Cup 2006? Adidas, Nike, Puma or even Joma?
March 17th, 2006 | by Klaus Holzapfel |
32 teams will be competing for the Soccer World Cup in Germany this summer. But this is only a small piece in the puzzle. A total of 7 manufacturers made it into the tournament and are going to compete just as hard behind the curtains as the players on the pitch.
Puma did sign 12 teams: Angola, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Iran, Italy, Paraguay, Poland, Saudi-Arabia, Switzerland, Togo, Czech Republic und Tunisia.
- Nike has 8 teams under its wings: Australia, Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, South Korea and (of course) the United States.
- Adidas is one of the main sponsors of the World Cup. You’ll see the three stripes also with the following six teams: Argentina, Germany, France, Japan, Spain and Trinidad & Tobago.
- Umbro will be represented by England and Sweden.
- Lotto is sponsoring Serbia & Montenegro and the Ukraine.
- Costa Rica is going to wear Joma
- and
- Ecuador’s team is going to run in Marathon.
In order to create a big hype and demand for fan products in the “big soccer nations” they will have to reach the quarter or semi-finals. But for some of the less established countries in the world of soccer a smaller success like reaching the round of 16 could already lead to an strong increase in demand Jerseys and other fan products.
Puma has been very successful with that strategy in the past ( i.e. Cameroon in 1990) and obviously pursues the same strategy again.
Adidas and Nike are obviously going for the big prize. The two Elephants are throwing most of their weight behind the favorites.
The soccer fields has been leveled quite a bit over the last few years. It is going to be harder to predict who will win and outsider are having better chances to upset the favorites. This year’s world cup might not be as extreme like the 2002 cup where most players form Europe arrived without enough rest and hardly played their best game. But we will definitely see big surprises again. It might not lead to Costa Rica reaching the final and Joma’s stock going through the roof, though.
What do we want? Good soccer, the best team to win, good sportsmanship (on and off the field), fans from the world having a good time in a country that still has a lot of friendly people left to make a good host (even though I left 15 years ago:-).
PS:
Why am I writing all this on blog that is dealing with guerilla and word-of-mouth marketing? This is not just the biggest single sports event - it is also the biggest stage for marketers all over the world. This includes traditional marketers (booooring) as well as the whole guerilla marketing scene. Guess what we’ll be doing besides watching the games?
