Each of the fifteen official FIFA World Cup sponsors paid about m for the rights to spend about the same again associating their brand with the tournament. Is official access to the proposed audience of nearly a billion people really worth nearly 0m or could that money be better spent elsewhere or not at all?

Companies from all sectors have invested in some form of World Cup piggy-backing activity, from Puma sponsoring twice as many teams as official sponsor Adidas, to us, Intangible Business, providing a weekly commentary on issues thrown up by the tournament. So which is best: official or unofficial? What follows are examples of how some brands have capitalized on the World Cup, often to the detriment of the official sponsors.

Bavaria
Holland's second largest brewery, Bavaria, stumbled upon the idea of offering Dutch fans the opportunity to purchase a pair of branded orange trousers with a tail of a lion design on - Holland's national colour and symbol. The trousers also had two large pockets in which to put cans of beer and on buying twelve cans of Bavaria, fans could buy the trousers for just .95. A quarter of a million of these patriotic ‘Leeuwehose' (lion trousers) have been bought over the past few months becoming the uniform of Dutch football fans. When over 1,000 fans wearing the trousers tried to get into Holland's match against the Ivory Coast, however, events came to a head.

Officials refused entry to the fans because Bavaria is not an official sponsor of the World Cup and it clashed with Budweiser's sponsorship and supply arrangements....so the fans took off their trousers and watched the game in their underpants.

What ensued has been a PR dream for Bavaria and a disaster for the seeming bully, Budweiser. Budweiser was already on the receiving end of bad press in Germany as it is the only beer available in the German stadiums and the Germans, along with other Europeans, dislike it. The trouser campaign has generated considerable coverage and goodwill for Bavaria at the expense of its larger rival and official sponsor, Budweiser.

Puma
During the last World Cup, Puma received much attention by designing sleeveless shirts for the Cameroon team. This time around, Puma is expecting its brand to be noticed by the sheer scale of its team sponsorships. Its leaping cat logo is seen on teams from twelve countries, more than any other brand and twice as many as official sponsor Adidas. The leaping cat's positioning on the shirts will also help its standout as it is just below the center of the collar and on the shoulder, rather than the more conventional right chest. Puma appears to have usurped Adidas' position as official sports sponsor and escaped the m charge.

Footballs
Although Adidas supplies the official game balls, several other brands are capitalizing on the World Cup to launch their own World Cup footballs. Puma and Nike have both launched World Cup footballs and even fashion brands such as Hugo Boss and Paul Smith have designed limited edition balls, with the latter available in a floral pattern, a multi-hued pinstripe and a copper-toned one with wide stripes of metallic gold, red and blue. And you can even buy a Louis Vuitton bag in which to carry your football for a cool ,230.

Spam
Spam, the canned lunch meat popular after the Second World War and immortalized by Monty Python, launched a commemorative limited edition World Cup tin with the tag line ‘A great taste around the world'. The can features flags of the competing countries and a football logo with the words ‘2006 Football World Cup Special Edition Can' orbiting it. This is a clear association with the World Cup but without the m price tag.

MSN Sports
Yahoo! is the official online sponsor of the 2006 World Cup, providing the official website and the only official content. MSN, however, has plowed significant resource into competing websites. The websites have diaries, blogs, webcasts and unique comment on the games from key players such as Michael Owen of England, Ronaldinho of Brazil, Xabi Alonso of Spain, Gianluigi Buffon of Italy, Kevin Kuranyi of Germany and Edgar Davids of the Netherlands. All this activity is designed to direct attention and traffic away from the official sponsor, Yahoo!. Meanwhile, some of the m MSN saved from not being the official sponsor has no doubt gone into its funding. 

Retailers
Over .8 billion is expected to be spent during the World Cup on related products in England. Woolworths has 300 World Cup products ranging from refrigerators to strollers and the supermarket Sainsbury's expects to sell more than 750,000 England flags. Sales of flat-screen televisions, costing more than £1,000 each, have increased by 250% and Curry's, one of the largest electrical retailers in the UK, reported selling one every fifteen seconds. And to nobody's surprise, sales of alcohol are expected to increase by 25%. Bookmakers, travel agents, pubs, bars all expect bumper results and few brands are missing the opportunity to take advantage of the World Cup. Adidas, Nike and Puma have all launched new football boots and even Brazil's stylish Havaiana flip flops have been produced in different team colours.

Conclusion
Attempting to prohibit brands from using the words ‘FIFA World Cup', images of the trophy, official mascot and emblem on their products does not seem to have prevented brands from taking advantage of the World Cup in varying degrees of legitimacy. These brands and hundreds of others are all having success without paying the m fee.

No doubt there are advantages to being an official sponsor. Research commissioned by Van Communications from ICM Research in the UK, showed that during the build up to the World Cup awareness levels of the official sponsors, as official sponsors, increased by an average of 7%. Unprompted awareness of the identity of the official sponsors was relatively low. Coke scored the highest with 18%, tied for second were Budweiser and Adidas with 9%, followed by McDonald's with 6% and MasterCard with only 3%. Nike, due to the success of its guerrilla marketing techniques scored 8% unprompted awareness as an official sponsor, more than twelve other brands that actually are sponsors.

These examples illustrate that brands need not spend m on being an official sponsor to capitalize on the World Cup opportunity. The ‘World Cup effect' is estimated by the Centre of Economics and Business Research (CEBR) to generate an additional .7 billion for the competing countries, so sheer inertia should see an increase in activity. And with the lack of easy access encouraging creativity, unofficial, in many ways, beats official.