Brazil is getting ready...all the structures are almost in place for the forthcoming World Cup and actually this year games FIFA 'Confederations Cup' . Everyone is eager to use the games to boost their own businesses' activities and of course to market their products in connection with the games. However, the companies that have already won the bet to sponsor the games are also eager to get that exclusivity --they have earned that right for which they paid.
FIFA holds the exclusive use of term such as "Mundial 2014", "Copa do Mundo", "Copa 2014" or "São Paulo 2014" . The federal government, however, has an "exclusive license" to use the terms and are taking all precautions to protect the rights of trading partners. It is reported that the number of illegal marks overtakes the one reported in South Africa, which hosted the two competitions in 2009 and 2010 respectively.
A spokesperson for FIFA noted that the Confederations Cup and the World Cup have already closed all the deals relating to marketing and the ‘the package partner’ amount to 20 businesses and has reached a value of U.S. $ 1.4 billion.
Yet, prevention is one of the policies that Brazil is also working on – according to the following:
More than 100 cases of illegal use of the marks relating to the Confederations Cup and the World Cup in Brazil have been reported in the last six months. The person in charge for the protection of FIFA trade marks, Auke-Jan Bossenbroek, said that they have managed to contact most of the illegal traders and have solved the matters in an amicable way. In the same line, but quite controversial, the the FIFA Marketing Director, Thierry Weil noted that "What annoy us are big companies, who know they are doing something wrong."
The news noted that the surrounding of the stadiums will have a restriction on traders – the places will only be available to authorized ones. On the actual game days there will be two to three FIFA people who will be reporting any illegal cases to the local security.
Certainly, preventing people creating an unauthorised association between their goods and services and the games; and preventing any other activity that undermine the sponsor revenues as for example the sale of counterfeit and unnoficial goods should form part of the success of the games.
