The World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world. The 2002 championship game between Germany and Brazil was seen by 1.1 billion people in 213 countries. For comparison, the 2002 Super Bowl was viewed by roughly 100 million people world wide. The World Cup crown’s the champion of the world’s game…not America’s.

While the rest of the world is bursting at the seams with joy over these two weeks of competition, U.S. companies are stuck in a quandary of what to do. America doesn’t really care about soccer (football). Our national past-time is baseball and the biggest sporting event of the year is the Super Bowl. So what are American companies supposed to do?

To me it seems they have two options: try to ignore it, or try to go after the foreign-based population here in the U.S.  Some companies like Wal-Mart are doing just that by trying to focus on the Hispanic population here through special products, promotions and showing the games on plasma screen televisions in the store.  Other U.S. companies like Budweiser are sponsoring the World Cup to promote their brand to the rest of the world.

I think it’s an interesting scenario for U.S. companies to deal with every four years.

Share This: Email or bookmark the post