Who really wins the World Cup?

**Gideon Long** (0:01)
It's World Cup final weekend.

**Alex Espinoza** (0:04)
I was lucky enough to go to one, and I was able to actually experience World Cup firsthand, and I think I teared up a little bit doing that.

**Gideon Long** (0:12)
And it's World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Gideon Long, and we're going to be looking at the branding and the money behind the football World Cup. Plus, how do you put an insurance value on a priceless historical artifact? And what on earth is Manchesterism?
Well, sadly, for some of us anyway, that's the sound of Argentina fans in Buenos Aires celebrating Lautaro Martinez winning goal against England in the Football World Cup semi-final on Wednesday. For the past six weeks, North America has been the epicentre of the football world, 48 teams vying to be world champions, and Sunday's final in New Jersey between Spain and Argentina will crown what's generally been seen as a very successful tournament. We don't know who will win the World Cup yet, but on the commercial side, the winners are clearer. Football's world governing body FIFA has sold more tickets at higher prices than ever before. And with Adidas providing the shirts for both finalists, the German sportswear company will be feeling pretty pleased too. Nike, which makes the shirts for Brazil, France and England less so. Joining us now is Stephen Powell, Vice President of the Brand Outreach Agency for Soccer. He's worked with several football brands, including Adidas and Argentina. Stephen, thanks for being on the show with us. Let's start with that shirt issue, if we may. Both teams on Sunday wearing Adidas, both defeated semi-finalists. England and France wore Nike. How big a deal is that? Would the executives at those two companies, would they have all been supporting their respective teams in the semi-finals?

**Stephen Powell** (1:58)
Yeah, it's a brilliant question, Neil. I think it depends on what success looks like for each individual brand. I think over the 48 nations represented in this expanded World Cup field, I think it's somewhere around 25 to 23 percent are held by Adidas and Nike.
I think the success that Marjantina has had to this tournament, led obviously by the talisman, you know, Leo Messi, I think is massive. I think the own media value they probably enjoyed is upwards $100 million plus, but they're both endemic to the sport and always have been.
You know, they're both publicly traded companies. I would expect that the global combined sales of Nike's big four, call it, USA, England, Brazil and France, will probably exceed what Argentina and Spain's combined global revenue will be through shirt sales. So, if I'm a shareholder, maybe I'm looking at one particular way. If I'm an executive, and I know those brands both very well, they are very, very competitive. They may see it as a wee bit of a loss, but I mean, it all comes down to the bottom line. That's why they invest those dollars to generate revenue.

**Gideon Long** (3:15)
Yeah, we were doing the maths earlier on. 14 of the teams at the World Cup were wearing Adidas, 12 wearing Nike and 11 wearing Puma. And those three companies, as you say, they do dominate the market, don't they? There are some smaller companies, so DR Congo, they were wearing Umbro, Panama War Reebok, Tunisia War Cappa. But how difficult is it for those smaller companies to break into that market and to break the dominance of the big three?

**Stephen Powell** (3:38)
It's amazingly difficult. And I think so much of it is a leap of faith, isn't it, really, because some of those other brands, it'll be a much, much larger percentage of their market and budget that they'd have to invest with those clubs. And the leap of faith is, I mean, it's interesting, because going into this tournament, I personally can't say I was a massive fan of the expanded field. I felt like it was going to be some of these smaller nations were going to get walloped. And how does it help a nation in its development of the game if it's getting beat 15-nil?
And then, you know, Cape Verde comes along, Curacao comes along, they perform amazingly well.
You know, the US especially loves an underdog. And they created so many new fans here. I think Cape Verde's kit ran off the shelves and was sold out very, very quickly. So, you know, how do you anticipate how it's going to work out? I think if you can, if you're one of those brands, you've just got to, you know, hit your wagon to one of those countries which you feel has got the potential to, you know, to get through these early rounds, get out into the knockout rounds and be successful. But it's such a bloody big gamble if you don't have a massive budget.