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29 March 2024

Ad spend up 20% on Fifa World Cup

A glass football, bearing advertising, greets visitors outside the O R Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa. Electronics, fast food, telecom and hospitality sectors are the largest ad spenders. (AFP)

Published
By Dima Hamadeh

The Fifa World Cup has boosted the advertising market with an increase of 20 per cent in the spending over the last month, said industry professionals.

Advertising experts believe July will be a golden month for the otherwise slowly recovering industry because of the football cup and the Dubai Summer Surprises (DSS).

Satish Mayya, Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, BPG Media, said: "This period is generally known for boosting advertising spend due to DSS offers. But this year, the market is expected to see a substantial surge because of the World Cup. According to my estimation, this month will witness an increase of 15 to 20 per cent [in ad spend] compared to last month."

The Fifa World Cup, to be held between mid-June and mid-July, is already starting to hype up the market with various promotions, competitions, special offers and mixed media advertising.

"Every one is presenting ideas that would generate extra billings during this event. We are constantly receiving proposals and selling propositions," said Michael Nammour, Media Buying Director, Mediaedge:Cia.

He added: "We know for a fact that clients have set aside special budgets for the once-in-four-years event."

Television is traditionally the main medium to make profit from the World Cup advertising, with about 60 per cent of the budgets set for TV. Both Mayya and Nammour confirmed that.

Nammour said: "TV usually receives the largest share of Fifa advertising. Al Jazeera Sports Channel, the owner of the exclusive rights for the 2010 Fifa world Cup broadcast in the region, is taking the largest chunk of advertising, including official world cup sponsors.

Meanwhile, other TV stations have devised various ways to attract advertisers either by setting special studios for games commentaries, or by launching competitions for viewers with prizes including sponsoring a trip to the final World Cup game." Mathew Mathai, General Manager of Sony Gulf, said Sony's budget for the Fifa World Cup in the region alone is amounting to $5 million (Dh18.36m). Sony is one of the official sponsors of Fifa, with a partnership contract of $305m, according to the Sony's official blog.

Mathai said Sony's advertising and promotions campaigns for Fifa in the region encompass 23 countries in the Middle East and North Africa. "We are spending around $2m to cover the expenses of 560 winners on a trip to the World Cup, including travel fare and accommodation expenses during event in South Africa."

He added: "Another $3m is our special advertising budget, which will include ads in TV, print, magazines, online and outdoor."

"Sony's advertising spend on TV will be between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of the budget," added Mathai. "Print will see 20 per cent of the budget, while the remaining 20 per cent will be divided among online, outdoor and cinema."

The largest ad spend is expected to come from sectors such electronics, fast food, telecommunications and the hospitality.

Nammour said this increase in advertising spend did not reflect on the TV rate cards for ad spots and sponsorships packages. "In any case, those rate cards are always subject to negotiations. During the Fifa cup, negotiations are resulting in reductions up to 70 per cent of the official prices for ad spots."

He explained that this was because broadcasters were in a fierce race this season to attract the remaining budgets that will not be spent on Al Jazeera Sports channel.

Existing subscribers wanting access to five especially dedicated channels – including Al Jazeera Sports 3D – will be charged around $100 for the upgrade, while non-subscribers will pay $130. Al Jazeera will also broadcast the matches live on new website aljazeerasport.tv, which will be created specifically for the World Cup. Al Jazeera Sport said it has earmarked 350 staff for 1,000 hours of 2010 World Cup.

World Cup 2010 Analysts at Screen Digest have been assessing the Fifa World Cup's impact on media markets. According to 'Sports rights market monitor', a report just published by the media analysts, despite the potential for huge TV audiences and the opportunity to see games in 3D for the first time, the soaring cost of rights has already priced many advertising-supported broadcasters out of the market for the event, reported Rapid TV News, a broadcast and online news portal.

Leaders of sports channels said this was possible, due to the fact that the Arab world had much less TV subscribers estimated at one million viewers, compared to Europe's larger demography.

Online, on the other hand, is seen to catch up with a major increase. With digital becoming the highlight of new innovations, and an untapped gold mine of young audiences, advertisers have set aside separate budgets for online advertising.

Nammour said: "I can comfortably say that online advertising has increased at least by 40 per cent this month compared to regular days. Out of the general media media mix, online is ahead of radio advertising, both sharing a 10 per cent share of the total advertising budgets."

Mustafa Mohamed, General Manager, Net Advantage, the representative of kooora.com, the top sports website in the region according to the latest ratings from Effective Measure, estimated online advertising budgets at a total of $3m.

He said: "Advertising response is amazing. To avoid clutter, we have limited our sponsors to eight and we already have our sponsorship deals secured with eight in the GCC alone, and two others in Egypt and Jordan."

The sports website, which has an average 900 million page views per month, expected to see a rise to more than 1 billion during the Fifa games, said Mohamed.