Soccer World Cup in Qatar: "A dilemma for sponsors"

Normally, major sporting events such as soccer World Cups or the Olympic Games offer good opportunities for sponsors to promote messages and visibility through high reach on an international scale. As spectators are usually heavily involved, the communication attracts a high level of attention. This provides a good "breeding ground" for the desired image transfer - the transfer of positive characteristics of the sponsored party to the sponsor.

However, three surveys of soccer fans conducted by us over the course of the year in cooperation with the voting app "FanQ" show that the World Cup in Qatar appears in a poor light due to the inadequate human rights situation, for example, and that fans' interest in the tournament is low.

Shortly before the start of the tournament, almost 85% of those surveyed stated that their anticipation was "much lower" compared to previous World Cups. More than one in two (54.9%) do not want to watch a single match, while 17.3% still want to watch the matches involving Germany. The surveys show that all possible references for image transfers - FIFA as the sponsoring institution, the tournament itself and Qatar as the host country - are viewed negatively by the majority of respondents. The communicative conditions for sponsors and advertising partners around a soccer World Cup could hardly be worse.

Our surveys show that sponsoring the World Cup potentially damages the image of sponsors. In line with the assessment of possible references for a sponsorship, over 70 percent of those surveyed stated that the image is influenced "rather negatively" or "very negatively" as a result. Instead of a mental connection between the sponsor and a competition with outstanding sporting achievements, associations arise with thousands of workers who have died or their exploitation by employers.

Sponsors even have to fear that customers will no longer buy their products or only buy them to a lesser extent: Almost 60 percent of respondents say that sponsoring the World Cup has a negative impact on their willingness to buy the sponsor's products. The "return value" for the expensive sponsorship purchased by the companies in the form of far-reaching attention and favorable positioning would not materialize and would even lead to damage for the companies.

Possible behaviours of World Cup sponsors can be characterized as (rather) passive or (rather) active strategies. The search for a suitable approach must take into account the dilemma that both options have serious disadvantages.

While passivity carries the risk for a sponsor of being caught unchallenged in the "maelstrom" of negative, intensifying assessments by a public that expects a "clear edge" to be shown, active strategies (e.g. involvement in campaigns that call on FIFA and the host country to pay adequate compensation for injured or killed workers) can lead to the original messages no longer getting through. In addition, such a countermeasure would leave the suspicion that the conditions for sponsorship were initially misjudged.

The consideration must take the respective situation of the companies into account and bear in mind that there is hardly any time left to roll out measures shortly before the start of the tournament. Sponsors that are only associated with one team, for example, can reduce their involvement "unnoticed" and thus avoid negative public reactions to some extent - whether this benefits the long-term interests of the company is another matter. Large companies in particular, such as Coca-Cola, which have been FIFA partners and World Cup sponsors for many years and have strong brands, could express criticism unambiguously through a variety of channels and also try to improve the situation in Qatar and their own brand positioning with corresponding activities beyond the tournament.