Techdirt. Stories about "fifa"

FIFA Orders Brazil To Overturn Ban On Selling Beer At World Cup Matches

Glyn Moody — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:05:30 PST

One of the recurrent themes on Techdirt is the sense of entitlement the owners of various kinds of monopolies display, and their common belief that being able to maximize the profit from those monopolies trumps any other consideration.

For example, FIFA, the world governing body for soccer/football, uses its monopoly on organizing the World Cup to demand some rather extraordinary privileges. Here are just some of the things the UK government was prepared to accept as part of its bid to host the 2018 World Cup:

The U.K. said it would meet FIFA’s requirements to create a 2-kilometer perimeter around stadiums, and said the right to conduct commercial activities there was subject to the approval of FIFA or its appointees. The government also agreed to suspend some labor laws that affected FIFA’s activities and to lift restrictions on the import and export of foreign currency.

FIFA is currently trying to assert similar rights in Brazil, where the 2014 World Cup will be held: Fifa General Secretary Jerome Valcke said the right to sell beer must be enshrined in a World Cup law the Brazilian Congress is considering.

Alcoholic drinks are currently banned at Brazilian stadiums and the country's health minister has urged Congress to maintain the ban in the new law.
FIFA evidently believes that keeping its sponsors happy (Budweiser is a "big Fifa sponsor" according to the article quoted above) is much more important than local laws or people's health. Valke explains: "Alcoholic drinks are part of the Fifa World Cup, so we're going to have them. Excuse me if I sound a bit arrogant but that's something we won't negotiate," he said.
"A bit arrogant"? Surely not...

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FIFA Threatens To Sue Brewery, Because Dutch World Cup Fans Wore Orange

Mike Masnick — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:09:03 PDT

FIFA, the organization that runs the World Cup, is notoriously aggressive in defending not just its own intellectual property, but those of any sponsors, while going to extreme lengths to crack down on any non-sponsor getting any kind of publicity whatsoever without paying. It's not unlike the Olympics in that manner. Of course, that leads to some absolutely ridiculous situations, like the one many of you are sending in about FIFA ejecting 36 Dutch World Cup team supporters for the massive sin of all wearing the same orange dresses. Why? Because the women all bought the dresses from a Dutch brewery, named Bavaria, so FIFA claims it was a viral marketing stunt by the brewery to capitalize on its IP without paying. In fact, FIFA is now threatening to sue. I'd love to see that lawsuit, because it's difficult to think of any sane reason why this should break any law. As someone from the brewery noted:

"Fifa does not have the monopoly on orange and people have the freedom to wear what they want."

What if a bunch of fans all just decided to wear the same things to show support for their team?

Of course, the really amusing part of all of this is that, without ejecting those women, I would bet most people would have had no idea at all that the orange dresses represented this brewery. Now, however, it's all over the press. Nice work FIFA. You just helped promote the brewery.

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For Staunch Copyright Defenders, Big Singers From Big Labels Seem To Copy From Others A Lot...

Mike Masnick — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 11:22:18 PDT

Reader Dan points us to a long, but fascinating article by someone tracing a number of stories involving famous Western pop stars copying famous songs that originated in Cameroon, without any credit (or, of course, money) -- including the song by Shakira that is currently the World Cup theme song -- which some folks did some online detective work to track down its origins:

Ze Bella who had retired from the Presidential Guards in 2002 was enjoying a quiet retirement in his village when he got a call from an acquaintance in France informing him that Shakira had just released a version of Zangalewa. This information was soon confirmed by Emile Kojidy another Golden Sounds alum now living in the United States. They were both right.

A few days earlier, the Internet had been inundated with buzz about the new song by Columbian pop star Shakira titled "Zaminamina" which was rumoured to be the official anthem for the FIFA 2010 World Cup. To many listeners, the song was eerily familiar and many bloggers and journalist sought to find out the origins of the song....

To Cameroonians and many African, the origins of the song was no mystery as they instantly recognized it as a remix of "Zangalewa". Thus began a frenzied online campaign to alert the world that this was not a Shakira original but a remix.

After the evidence became overwhelming, and people started complaining, Shakira's label (Sony) was forced to come to the table and settle (some believe that FIFA pushed them to make sure that the song was "cleared" before they would use it as the World Cup official song). Now, I, like many don't think there's anything wrong with musicians building on the works of others. It's how music has pretty much always been created. However, it does seem very hypocritical for all these big labels and big musicians to be whining about copyright infringement, when it appears that they try to get away with it themselves when they can.

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Kulula Responds To FIFA Legal Threats With Hilarious Clarifying Ad

Mike Masnick — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:35:40 PDT

In response to our post about FIFA threatening Kulula airlines in South Africa over its advertisment jokingly declaring itself the "unofficial national carrier of the 'you-know-what'," JJ sends over the news that Kulula has put together a new ad that looks similar to the old ad, but which changes the text to the even more ambiguous: "Not Next Year, Not Last Year, But Somewhere in Between" to avoid saying the dreaded "2010." The artwork in the ad is similar to the original, but clarifies that each thing that you might interpret as being about the World Cup is actually about something else. For example, the vuvuzelas (horns) are "definitely, definitely golf tees" and the guy who looks like he might be playing football is actually just a "man putting his right foot in, his right foot out and shaking it all about." Small versions are below, but be sure to click through for the larger versions: Original ad

Latest ad

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FIFA Demands Airline Drop Ad That Didn't Mention FIFA At All

Mike Masnick — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:10:52 PDT

Earlier this year, we wrote about how the Olympics, notorious for trying to control everything associated with the Olympics to block anyone from doing any marketing around the games if they haven't paid up, got upset at company selling a t-shirt that read:

"Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 and 2011 Edition."

Now it looks like something similar has happened with the World Cup and the South African airline, Kulula. Kulula, if you don't know, is somewhat famous for its sense of humor. In particular, I really like the way the company recently redesigned one of its airplanes as "Flying 101": Along those lines, the airlines decided to make a joke of the limits that FIFA struck on sponsors of the World Cup and put out an advertisement calling itself the:

"Unofficial National Carrier of the You-Know-What."

And, along with that it included images of stadiums, national flages and vuvuzelas (a type of horn regularly blown at football matches in South Africa). FIFA apparently sent a threat letter demanding Kulula pull the ad, calling it "ambush marketing." Apparently, FIFA has no sense of humor. After people got annoyed, FIFA put out a silly statement saying that it never said the airline couldn't use certain words or symbols -- but it just couldn't use them all in combination.

Of course, you have to imagine that all the additional attention to Kulula thanks to this "controversy" doesn't bother the airline one bit...

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Does It Make Sense That A Non-Official Advertiser Can't Give Away Sporting Events Tickets?

Mike Masnick — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:05:00 PST

Back in October, we wrote about how the Philadelphia Eagles were trying to stop radio stations from doing promotional giveaways of tickets they had legally purchased. The team basically claims that the terms (which no one reads nor technically "agrees" to) on the back of the ticket forbid such uses of the tickets. Instead, clearly, the Eagles wanted to sell the rights to do promotional giveaways. Now there's a similar lawsuit involving Major League Soccer and FIFA. JJ points us to a lawsuit in which the organization that handles marketing for both soccer organizations is quite upset at Black & Decker for doing ticket giveaway promotions. The reason why they're so upset? B&D competitor Makita is "the official power tool" of both soccer leagues in the US. In this case, they're arguing trademark infringement and breach of contract, though both seem questionable. If it's an accurate promotion, such that B&D is literally giving away legally purchased tickets and merchandise, then as long as it doesn't suggest endorsement from the soccer leagues, there shouldn't be much confusion. As for the breach of contract, if B&D never agreed to the contract, it's hard to see how they can be held to it.

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