Ambush Marketing In Times Of World Cup And Olympic Games

Sports arouse passions all over the world and influence behaviors and social values. Sports competitions mobilize the collectivity: the higher the social interest, the greater the public and their projection will be. It is not new that companies and industries have realized that more than attracting passionate supporters, the sports disclose an unexplored consumer market. Advertising in this new market moves the so called sports industry.

One of the ways of investing in this sector is by acquiring quotas to sponsor the events. In return for the funding of their organization, investors acquire exclusivity rights to display and associate their brands. Depending on the size of the event, the quotas may be considerable, and the sponsors will be limited to a "select" group that will benefit from the projection of the event where their products and services will be displayed through different means of advertising and on different media.

The practice represented by the adoption of commercial and advertising maneuvers associating the name, brand and/or other distinctive signs of a sports event to entities that have not acquired sponsorship quotas is called ambush marketing or marketing "by association".

The subjective aspect within the concept of ambush marketing is the intent of the entity making the association between its brand and a certain event of conveying a false impression to the public by making it believe that said entity is an official sponsor, whereas it is not, and with that, obtaining advantages and benefits.

However, not all forms of association imply an unlawful act. There are also marketing practices making indirect and creative associations, without necessarily violating any rights. The determination of whether a certain practice is unlawful or at least questionable from an ethical view, or not, will be on a case-by-case basis and subject to the general context.

This theme is current and arouses the interest of Brazilian companies, especially considering that the country will host the World Cup 2014 and Rio de Janeiro will host the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2016. These are classical examples of highly significant events whose names and brands are frequently associated, without their organizers' authorization, to non-sponsoring companies' brands.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Fifa have been historically adopting global measures to combat the ambush marketing and are already concerned about preventing association...