World Cup sponsors tread fine line over involvement with Qatar tournament

The deci­sion to award Qatar the 2022 FIFA World Cup in 2010 raised a num­ber of eye­brows. Many ques­tioned how a small Mid­dle East­ern nation with one sta­di­um, 40-degree sum­mers, lit­tle foot­balling his­to­ry and a ques­tion­able record on human rights could be assigned as host of one of the world’s pre­mier sport­ing events.

With kick-off in a lit­tle over a week, some of those ques­tions have been answered. The tour­na­ment is tak­ing place in win­ter to avoid the worst of the heat and an esti­mat­ed $200bn (£175bn) has been spent on infra­struc­ture and sta­dia. How­ev­er, the country’s stance on LQBTQ+ rights and treat­ment of migrant work­ers – some 6,500 of which are esti­mat­ed to have died – still threat­en to over­shad­ow the com­pe­ti­tion.

Despite this, com­pa­nies con­tin­ue to spend large sums in order to be asso­ci­at­ed with the event, which FIFA pre­dicts will be watched by 5 bil­lion peo­ple. While this is down on some pre­vi­ous tour­na­ments (data from Glob­al­Da­ta esti­mates spon­sor­ship deals will gen­er­ate $1.1bn (£960m) for FIFA this year, a 16% drop since the 2014 World Cup), it’s clear brands believe the rewards of an asso­ci­a­tion with the event out­weight the risks.

“We’ve not seen huge drop-offs in terms of spon­sor spend at this tour­na­ment,” says Con­rad Wiacek, head of sport analy­sis and con­sult­ing at Glob­al­Da­ta. “And there has been an increase in spend­ing from local part­ners.”

This comes despite Cas­trol, Con­ti­nen­tal Tires, Emi­rates Air­lines, John­son & John­son and Sony all end­ing deals with FIFA after the Brazil World Cup, in the wake of the scan­dal sur­round­ing the award­ing of Rus­sia and Qatar with the fol­low­ing two tour­na­ments. 

Football’s gov­ern­ing body respond­ed by court­ing Mid­dle East­ern com­pa­nies, with Qatar Air­ways sign­ing up in 2017 and state-owned oil com­pa­ny QatarEn­er­gy part­ner­ing with FIFA ear­li­er this year. The oth­er FIFA part­ners for the Qatar World Cup are Wan­da Group, Visa, Adi­das, Hyundai Motor Group and Coca-Cola.

Sponsors pledge to leave ‘positive legacy’

Accu­sa­tions of sports­wash­ing have left many of the tournament’s head­line cor­po­rate spon­sors in a dif­fi­cult posi­tion. A coali­tion of human rights groups approached 14 FIFA part­ners to press the foot­ball gov­ern­ing body and the Qatari gov­ern­ment to prop­er­ly com­pen­sate migrant work­ers. Only four (AB InBev, Adi­das, Coca-Cola and McDon­ald’s) issued a state­ment of sup­port.

Some com­pa­nies have respond­ed by not ref­er­enc­ing Qatar in their World Cup mes­sag­ing, such as in Adi­das’ lat­est adver­tise­ment. “It’s a sim­ple com­mu­ni­ca­tion trick they are using to lim­it expo­sure,” says founder of Sport By Fort Con­sult­ing Ricar­do Fort.

Oth­ers con­test that they can bet­ter influ­ence change in Qatar by being involved in the tour­na­ment. One of the longest-serv­ing FIFA part­ners is Coca-Cola. A spokesper­son for the com­pa­ny claims that “sport has the unique poten­tial to bring the world togeth­er and be a force for good”, although it recog­nis­es that “fur­ther reform remains to be done”.

Both Coca-Cola and Adi­das point to their involve­ment with human rights organ­i­sa­tions as an “exam­ple of tan­gi­ble progress”. This has result­ed in human rights prin­ci­ples being embed­ded into FIFA’s con­tracts with hosts, while work along­side the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Orga­ni­za­tion has led to reform of work­ers rights in Qatar, includ­ing an increase in the min­i­mum wage. 

How­ev­er, the kafala spon­sor­ship sys­tem – used to employ many of the migrant con­struc­tion work­ers who helped build the World Cup sta­dia – has meant that many are not pro­tect­ed by domes­tic labour laws. The sys­tem leaves work­ers open to exploita­tion and has been likened to forced labour by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al. 

McDonald’s, which is part of the sec­ond tier of spon­sors for the 2022 tour­na­ment, says: “We believe the advo­ca­cy sur­round­ing the World Cup com­ing to Qatar has led to pos­i­tive change and momen­tum regard­ing human rights, includ­ing safe­ty and worker’s rights, in the host coun­try. How­ev­er, we also recog­nise there is more to be done to ensure that the World Cup leaves a pos­i­tive lega­cy in Qatar.” 

LGBTQ+ rights in Qatar

Qatar has also been wide­ly crit­i­cised by the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for its atti­tude towards LGBTQ+ rights, with homo­sex­u­al­i­ty still a crime pun­ish­able with up to sev­en years in prison. This alone should have been suf­fi­cient to revoke Qatar’s right to host the World Cup, accord­ing to 62% of Brits. 

Many brands that are spon­sor­ing this year’s World Cup also held LGBTQ+ aware­ness ini­tia­tives dur­ing Pride month ear­li­er this year, lead­ing to accu­sa­tions of dou­ble stan­dards. Organ­is­ers of the World Cup have insist­ed that “everybody’s wel­come”, yet none of Qatar’s dis­crim­i­na­to­ry laws have been sus­pend­ed for the tour­na­ment.  

Rob­bie de San­tos, direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and exter­nal affairs at LGBTQ+ char­i­ty Stonewall, says: “LGBTQ+ peo­ple in Qatar are crim­i­nalised and per­se­cut­ed for sim­ply exist­ing and can­not com­pro­mise who they are. It’s vital that the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies work­ing in the coun­try, make clear that they expect Qatari author­i­ties to respect and uphold free­dom of assem­bly and expres­sion and the rights of all, includ­ing LGBTQ+ peo­ple.”

Adi­das, which has been a FIFA part­ner since 1970 and will be pro­vid­ing the match ball for the tour­na­ment, claims that it has “strong­ly advo­cat­ed for unre­strict­ed access for all vis­i­tors regard­less of nation­al­i­ty, reli­gion, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or eth­nic back­ground”. A spokesper­son for the sports­wear brand adds: “We expect the World Cup to be ful­ly acces­si­ble to all vis­i­tors. If there are any infringe­ments, we will pur­sue the mat­ter.” 

Sponsors accused of hypocrisy

The con­tin­ued involve­ment of spon­sors will leave some of them open to accu­sa­tions of hypocrisy, accord­ing to Wiacek. “If brand spon­sors real­ly want­ed to make a point, why are they still spon­sor­ing it?” he says. “The con­verse argu­ment is that the only way you shed light on these issues is to active­ly engage with these coun­tries. But oth­er peo­ple may point to the sit­u­a­tion with apartheid South Africa, where the sport­ing boy­cott was effec­tive.”

In most instances, he expects World Cup spon­sors will “hold their nose and hope that crit­i­cisms are for­got­ten about by the time the next event is held” – par­tic­u­lar­ly with the promise of a North Amer­i­can World Cup on the hori­zon.

Hum­mel, for exam­ple, has cho­sen to “tone down” its brand­ing on Denmark’s World Cup kit, explain­ing that it doesn’t “wish to be vis­i­ble dur­ing a tour­na­ment that has cost thou­sands of peo­ple their lives”. But Fort claims this is “ more of a PR trick than a mean­ing­ful protest”.

“Hum­mel only spon­sors one nation­al team, so the risk of doing any harm to its own busi­ness by mak­ing its logo the same colour as the shirt is min­i­mal,” he adds. 

Fort antic­i­pates that any con­ver­sa­tions about human rights issues will be much less preva­lent once the first ball is kicked. He points to the fact that every World Cup com­pe­ti­tion has had some lev­el of con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing it – whether that be ques­tions over the safe­ty of con­struc­tion work­ers in the build up to the Brazil World Cup, or the 2018 tour­na­ment in Rus­sia, which he claims was “a night­mare for every­one”.

“As a spon­sor, you have to devel­op capa­bil­i­ties, process­es and struc­tures to deal with these issues,” he says. “Cri­sis man­age­ment is real­ly impor­tant and you have to be aware of all the pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions of being involved with an event like this. Qatar might bring some addi­tion­al prob­lems, but it’s cer­tain­ly not alone.” 

The US sanc­tions on Iran led to Nike with­draw­ing its sup­ply of boots for the Iran­ian nation­al team. Fort also sug­gests that, if a brand includes Tai­wan in a map of the world in its World Cup pro­mo­tions, “the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment might com­plain”.

He says: “Every­thing you do and every­thing you say or don’t say as a spon­sor, will be per­ceived pos­i­tive­ly or neg­a­tive­ly by a lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple. There is no way to win, you just have to choose who is going to beat you.”

The decision to award Qatar the 2022 FIFA World Cup in 2010 raised a number of eyebrows. Many questioned how a small Middle Eastern nation with one stadium, 40-degree summers, little footballing history and a questionable record on human rights could be assigned as host of one of the world’s premier sporting events.

With kick-off in a little over a week, some of those questions have been answered. The tournament is taking place in winter to avoid the worst of the heat and an estimated $200bn (£175bn) has been spent on infrastructure and stadia. However, the country’s stance on LQBTQ+ rights and treatment of migrant workers – some 6,500 of which are estimated to have died – still threaten to overshadow the competition.

Despite this, companies continue to spend large sums in order to be associated with the event, which FIFA predicts will be watched by 5 billion people. While this is down on some previous tournaments (data from GlobalData estimates sponsorship deals will generate $1.1bn (£960m) for FIFA this year, a 16% drop since the 2014 World Cup), it's clear brands believe the rewards of an association with the event outweight the risks.