Global soccer governing body FIFA has today (July 14) unveiled a sponsorship deal with major Chinese dairy firm Mengniu covering the upcoming 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
Mengniu will “leverage the offline venues of the Women’s World Cup alongside FIFA’s online platforms to launch a series of branding and promotional activities,” the governing body has said.
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This is the third time the brand has partnered with a FIFA World Cup, having struck similar sponsorship agreements for the 2018 and 2022 men’s editions.
In addition to its role as a tournament partner for FIFA, Mengniu is also a sponsor of China's national team, which will be competing at the Women’s World Cup. The tournament begins on July 20 and runs until August 20.
Romy Gai, chief business officer at FIFA, said: “We welcome Mengniu Group as an official sponsor of the FIFA Women's World Cup 2023. We are delighted to be working with the team again, and during the past two FIFA World Cups, we have felt a deep connection with each other's values. We look forward to working with Mengniu to bring the world a spectacular football spectacle when the FIFA Women's World Cup kicks off later this month."
Jeffrey Lu, Mengniu Group’s chief executive and also its executive director, added: “The continued successful cooperation with FIFA reflects the high recognition of Mengniu's brand and product quality by FIFA … Mengniu hopes to join hands with FIFA to make more people participate and love football, and get health and happiness from football competition.”
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By GlobalDataThe 32-team Women’s World Cup will take place across 10 venues in Australia and New Zealand.
Yesterday (July 13), FIFA announced a tie-up with the short-form video platform TikTok for the provision of tailored content from the tournament.
This marks the first official collaboration between the two entities.
Throughout the event, TikTok will aim to provide content such as “behind-the-scenes moments, team arrivals, live pre-match content, match highlights [and] player and coach reactions.”
FIFA and TikTok are also working to bring content creators from around the world to the tournament, to help “the global sports community on TikTok get a behind-the-scenes look at moments” from the event through influential creators.
There will also be a specific FIFA Women’s World Cup Hub established.
Harish Sarma, TikTok’s global head of sports, said: “By giving fans from around the world unique access to their favorite teams and players, TikTok has quickly become a go-to destination for women's sports content. As we celebrate one of the biggest women's sports events of the year, we're excited to be working with FIFA to bring dedicated content from the Women's World Cup to our global sports community, giving them a front-row seat to all the action.”
Elsewhere in Women’s World Cup news, FIFA has said it is giving away 20,000 free tickets in cooperation with accounting firm Xero, a tournament partner, to games in four Wellington venues, as concerns around match attendance in the country continue.
While over 1 million tickets have been sold across the 64 matches, the significant majority of those sales have come from Australia, with the country’s national team seen as contenders to win the event.
New Zealand, on the other hand, went on a 10-match winless streak in the build-up to the tournament.
Apart from Eden Park in Auckland, the three other New Zealand venues set to host matches (in the cities listed above) all have capacities below 40,000.
Six Australian venues – in Sydney (x2), Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Adelaide – are being utilized.
New Zealand is set to host 29 of the tournament’s 64 fixtures.
Last month, FIFA’s chief women’s soccer officer suggested New Zealand needed to increase its ticket sales rate.
Sarai Bareman told a New Zealand radio station: “I have to say my focus is a little bit more on New Zealand as we don’t have the luxury of [Australian national side] Matildas here.
“In Australia, they are the darlings of the country. Sam Kerr [the iconic Australian player] is a superstar and the whole country is in love with soccer because of the Matildas.
“There’s that selling power that the Matildas have that we don’t have quite here yet in New Zealand. So there’s a bit more of a lift to do in the coming weeks.”
While Eden Park is expected to sell out for New Zealand’s opening fixture against Norway, other matches are proving harder to sell.
In other FIFA news, the governing body will pay out $209 million to clubs whose players took part in the men’s 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
FIFA will pay that sum out across 440 clubs from 51 different countries, for 837 players.
FIFA is paying a daily amount of $10,950 to each of the players, regardless of how many World Cup minutes they played.
This is an increase from the per-player amount at the 2018 tournament in Russia, which was $8,530.
Manchester City, English Premier League champions, will be paid out the largest sum – $4,596,445.
