The stadiums are full, but off sight from the TV cameras the fan zones are empty. Euro 2008 has become a virtual tournament except for the few fans lucky enough to find tickets for the game. It is a festival of football being played out on the airwaves rather than in the villages and towns of Switzerland and Austria.
Organisers have blamed the bad weather but fans having shelled out upwards of €1000 for a ticket have been travelling together and bring their own supplies of beer, sandwiches and facepaint. Typically they have been coming for one game and leaving. The celebrations in the stadium have hardly filtered down into the local economy or cheered local shopkeepers many of whom have been knocking out cut price T shirts all week.
Another issue could be the stringent policing Uefa has tried to bring in to make their sponsors happy. Try walking in a fan zone with Pepsi T shirt and you might be ejected.
Football has always been about money but Uefa’s greed has been unique. The organisation stands to make almost half the debt of an African nation.
There are so many sponsors of Uefa 2008 that no one actually knows who they are. In a survey almost half of fans in Europe said they had no idea who is sponsoring this year’s Euro 2008 Championship. Survey Sampling International found 41 per cent of self-proclaimed football fans could not name any of the tournament’s main official partners, namely Adidas, Canon, Carlsberg, Castrol, Coca-Cola, Continental, Kia, JVC, MasterCard and McDonald’s. Uefa in its rapacious wisdom, does not have one sponsor but has a staggering 10 who are contributing a stunning £382 million.
The Germans were most likely to identify a brand – 72 per cent, then Spain 58 per cent and England 23 per cent. An Ipsos Mori survey reported that less than five per cent of 600 respondents associated Coca-Cola with the event - down from 14.5 per cent for Euro 2004. Similar falls in recognition were found in Carlsberg, down from 5.5 per cent in 2004 to just 1.5 per cent in 2008. McDonald’s awareness levels have also slumped, from 4.3 per cent to 0.8 per cent this year. According to Ipsos, of all the official sponsors, only Adidas posted any improvement on its Euro 2004 recognition to-date, rising from 1.8 per cent to 3.3 per cent.
The 10 named sponsors are just the global partners. Beyond them come the other sub sponsors like UBS bank who are the official bank of the tournament – which they are going to need – and is “national supporter” whatever that means. They have picked up the dubious privilege of organizing Swiss fan zones.
Plus there are what are called ambush sponsors who get round the rules for example by sponsoring a shirt. So Puma, Nike and Adidas sponsor five teams each, although only Adidas is an official sponsor. Umbro sponsor Sweden.
There is a further question of who these sponsors are. Is it really a good idea for the governing body of a sporting association to take money to promote a fast food operation like Macdonalds. Twenty years ago maybe having an official beer sponsor might have seemed a laddish thing to be doing but with footballers now excruciatingly fit and healthy and the shadow of crowd violence never more than a doorway away, is this the kind of company to associate with?
Similarly Coca-Cola is a fizzy drink with a lot of sugar in it and an American export. Surely Europe could/should have mustered its own soft drink for its own games? And if there is a beer sponsor why not a wine organisation? Or whisky?
The trade of these firms just underline the unprincipled nature of the sponsorship contracts. Anybody will do so long as they are rich enough to pay Uefa’s price. Except, notably absent are any bookmakers as if there is more moral high ground to distance itself from betting on a match than against continent wide outbreaks of obesity and drunkenness. The chances of a threat from match fixing in the full glare of global multi channel TV would seem to be rather more remote than of a referee awarding or not awarding an offside in these championships.
But Uefa being Uefa it also has its range of good sponsors on which it can lavish its funds on aswell as cigars and champagne. It has an official sponsored charity – the Red Cross. There is a tri-nation schools tournament, won by Latvia. As part of its commitment to support disabled soccer, each of the quarter final matches will be opened by an exhibition match between teams of disabled players.
Lawyers have been active to try and enforce Uefa laws banning media sites from using photographs of footballers. The TV pictures have been stunning, the still image selections have been poor by comparison, illustrating that in Uefa’s world every image is worth a few bucks. Three bars near the fan zones were cordoned off this week because they sold beers other than Carlsberg.
Uefa predictably has denied it is being heavy handed. “A spectator wearing a non-authorised logo will not have any trouble to get in as long as it’s not part of a large scale organised ambush-action. We are acting with common sense and are by no means aggressive,” said chief operating officer Martin Kallen.
Ambush marketing has become the preferred route for many companies excluded from this rich man’s table. Many have picked up TV slots around ITV’s coverage. BetClick waved its own banner at the France game last week and had its own dancing for street entertainment.
In Basel a tiny local brewer has set itself up as a David taking on the Goliath of official beer provider Carlsberg. Unser Bier has had thousands of T-shirts, beer mats and bottle labels printed up with the slogan: Basel. Mehr als nur Calrsbreg - “Basel. More than only Calrsbreg”, a double pun on the city’s official Euro 2008 motto of Basel. More than 90 minutes.
In the end Uefa is only an organisation with headquarters in Nyon, western Switzerland, even if for these three weeks it is behaving like it is more important than its host countries, the nation state of soccer. But as marketing expert Uta Jüttner from Lucerne’s University of Applied Sciences commented.” We respect Uefa’s right to protect their trademarks, but we also think that one of the biggest sporting events in Switzerland has an economic relevance that goes beyond a small number of official event sponsors.”
Switzerland and Austria may well be hoping that there is a few euros left for them and the local population after Uefa has gobbled up the rest. Ukraine and Poland who host 2012 be warned.
The sport of kings is gradually becoming the sport of the slapper and the spiv. This traces back to the arrival of the sharabang. Go back 20 or so years and the punters arrived in their Rollers and Bentleys with their champagne and picnics which they shared around their friends.
But the toughening of drink driving laws led to racecourses hiring in their own caterers and the development of buses, stretch limousines and sharabangs so everyone could have a jolly good party
Of all the moments so far in Euro 2008 this was surely the one that will stay in the mind longest. The phenomenal Gianluigi Buffon's save from Adrian Mutu for Italy against Romania which with hindsight ensured the Italians went forward to a quarter final against Spain and sent the Romanians home. It was in a sense the story of the match Mutu v Buffon, the former Chelsea and now Fiorentina striker looking electric as he nipped in behind the Italian defencce for the first goal. There was never any doubt that the apparently reformed cocaine sniffer would take the penalty. It was a solid hit. Buffon throws himself left, the ball strikes his arm full on but squirts down on to his ankle and away. It was a save mothers will name their boys after...there will be many a Gianluigi over the next few years for sure.
The pinnacle of the flat racing Royal Ascot, the most famous race meeting in the world, it claims weith a pedigree that goes back to 1711. The Times in 1911 advised would be racegoers: “Doubtless the debutante will wear her skirt just off the ground, if it suits her, but the majority of dresses will just touch the ground”. This year the instructions were that knickers should be worn but not seen, dress straps should be at least an inch wide. Ladies should wear “only formal day dress with a hat or substantial fascinator will be acceptable”.
The Ascot look 
A relaxed head behind the shoulders nonchalance is a sign of very good breeding
Smile, you are on a camera. The discreet ladies style, as the Dutch fans seem to have reinvented football fashion on the terraces.
The Elton John dyed poodle look
