2006 Fifa World Cup Germany History Essay

In these few years, because the economy recession, many industries have been affected, such as tourism industry, airline industry, auto industry and so on, the event industry is not the exception. There are two definitions of event from Business Dictionary (n.d.), “occurrence happening at a determinable time and place, with or without the participation of human agents. It may be a part of a chain of occurrences as an effect of a preceding occurrence and as the cause of a succeeding occurrence,” and “arrival of a significant point in time. In project management, an event marks the point in time when a task is completed.” There is many type of event in the industry, such as promotion event, marketing event and so on. This report will focus on one sport event, Fifa World Cup 2006 in Germany. At the beginning of the report, it will give the history of football, the World Cup and the background of the World Cup 2006. Economy, another beneficiary, security, infectious disease issue, sponsor, social impact and environment are the main parts. At the last is the conclusion.

2. History of football:

Football is a worldwide game, and it can be said that (FIFA, n.d.) it is the most popular game in the world, and its history is more than a hundred years. It was begun in 1863 in England, originally rugby football and association football was the same thing, when they were branched off, the Football Association in England was formed becoming the sport’s first governing body. It can be said actually this was a type of exercise date back to the second and third centuries BC in China. In that time, it was called Tsu Chu, the material and the size of the ball was different, of cause, the rule was different.

3. History of the World Cup:

The first World Cup tournament was taken place on Uruguay in 1930 (BBC, 2001), at that time just had thirteen nations competed, and just only four European countries. The final winner was the host Uruguay, and the second was Argentina. In 1934, the game was moved to Europe, and Italy both hosted and won the game. In 1938, the game played in France. As we know, because of the World War II, the tournament had to be stopped and then the tournament returned to South America on 1950 and Brazil hosted it. It was the most chaotic in World Cup history, and many teams had a long way to travel between matches. Because of the aftermath of World War II had passed, so the event was moved on to Switzerland on 1954. In 1958, perhaps the world’s greatest player (Pele) was appeared, and the country that was to dominate world football for the next 12 years. In 1962 the tournament was returned to South America. The game’s location was changing between Europe and South America, in 1966, it came back to the home England, and it had an exciting final in Wembley. In 1970, football got into another special time because of the satellite technology, and pitch red and yellow cards were used for the first time in Mexico. In 1974, the World Cup became the new FIFA World Cup and it was hosted by West Germany. In 1978, the final was between the Dutch and the host Argentina. Spain hosted the tournament in 1982, the involved teams were expanded from 16 to 24. In 1986, the World Cup was back to Mexico, another greatest player was appeared at that time, Diego Maradona of Argentina. The 1990 tournament was returned to Italy, finally West Germany took the crown from Argentina’s hand.

4. 2006 game background:

The last FIFA World Cup was opened on Germany on 2006, it could be said that it was the biggest event on 2006 (FIFA, 2006a). At the semi-final, Italian put down the host team Germany, it was a hard road, they had to spot-kick to terminate the game. At the end of the game, Italian team handed the World Cup’s crown. There was a historical time on the final game at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, a French player got a red card, he was Zinedine Zidane, one of the greatest players in the world. The World Cup was not the stage for the Italian, the host team finished as top scorers with 14 goals, thereinto five goals were from the Golden Shoe winner Miroslav Klose. The football month was not only attracted 3,359,439 spectators (FIFA, 2006) to attend matches in the 12 great stadiums, but also there was over 30 billion people watched those match through TV, internet etc globally.

5. The economy

The economy was one of the benefits the host country could get. Fortunately, this event gave very positive effect to the country, its economy and improved country’s imagination; actually, some events can lead the local economy down (DW, 2006). It was generated over 300 million Euros from tourism industry, 2 more billion Euros from retail and 50,000 jobs were created during the World Cup weeks (4 weeks). 40 million was made from ticket sales, the World Cup Organising Committee said that the net profit was 56.5 million Euros and they would put the money into German Soccer Federation (DFB) and German Soccer League (DFL). It was announced that, the DFB earned around 140 million Euros from the event (DW, 2006).

Other numbers, Germany used nearly 4 billion Euros to hold the mega event, and 15 million more visitors had been welcomed by Germany.

6. Another beneficiary:

The benefit was not just the Italian had, there was another major winner – children (FIFA, 2006b). A joint fundraising campaign which was called six villages for 2006, and it was between SOS Children’s Villages and FIFA. The campaign was collected over 21 million Euros, this money would give to over eight hundred orphaned and abandoned children globally. Furthermore, over five thousand children and one thousand would be benefited from a new ancillary social and educational projects.

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16.2 million Euros was the total number on collection, which was from three thousand people, and they pledged their support to SOS Children’s Villages as sponsors (FIFA, 2006b). Originally, the organization thought that those sponsors might make a long term commitment to SOS Children’s Villages and they were expected to support an additional one million Euros per year on next over five years, but the total income was expected to over 21 million Euros (FIFA, 2006b). In addition, FIFA donated the income, which was from fines in yellow and red cards at the Germany World Cup, the number was over three hundred thousand Euros. There were many other companies donate money to this campaign, such as the Infront Sports and Media, they donated all proceeds generated from the commercial public viewing licences in Germany, it surpassed seven hundred thousand Euros. Another big income, which was from the FIFA World Cup TV Ticket Show, it generated more than six hundred thousand Euros into the campaign. Moreover, many famous footballer, such as Pele, Shevchenko, Rooney, Cannavaro etc, they took time from their busy plan to support this fundraising campaign. Through this fundraising campaign, we can see that, during the mega event, it can generate a big number of money and they will use this event to do some other activities such as the fundraising campaign, but we have to consider, it has a good side but it may has a bad side too (FIFA, 2006b).

7. The impact on security:

Because of the World Cup event is globally, there was some problem on security area. For example, around two hundred football team fans were arrested by police during the match between German and Polish, and it made a big chaos for the event and the city (Kelso, 2006).

Actually this happen had been predicted before because of the two sides of fans would bring their enmity to Dortmund stadium. Although this trouble was happened in the city centre during the game, the people who were inside the stadium were still focus on the match. One of the reasons why the Polish did it was because they had resentment at their opponents’ behavior at the past. Another reason was because some hooliganism involved. On 2005, there was another demonstration clash between Polish and German, and the result was quite badly. Before the match day, fifty five people had been arrested by German police and four of them carried knife, but it was not enough to stop the problem, at the end of it, around two hundred fans had been arrested by the police in the city centre (Kelso, 2006). A French policeman, he dead because of the two sides fans crashed at the 1998 World Cup. There was an example of the impact on security, because this was the mega event, everything become happened was possible and those consequence should be considered (Kelso, 2006).

8. Infectious disease issue:

There were some health issues during the global mega event. Actually, the 2006 World Cup was related to some infectious disease, and here was an example in Munich in International Broadcast Centre (IBC) (Eurosurveillance, 2006). A group of people with gastrointestinal symptoms was informed on the local health department on 15 of June. The local health department began to do something for it at that evening, if they did not do that, the consequence would be hard to measure. Those patients came from different countries, such as Mexico, the United States and so on. They had a same point, it was they were all employed by IBC temporarily. At that time, the hygiene precautions were immediately begun, such as disinfecting surfaces and providing hand disinfection liquids in sanitary areas, and multi-language information leaflets was given to people, the local health department also checked the other people through people’s stool sample, unfortunately there were five were proven to be positive for norovirus. Afterward, genotype GGII.4-2006a had been found and totally there were 61 cases of gastroenteritis were linked to the norovirus outbreak in Munich. When you look this example, will you consider to go to this mega event? In this kind of mega events specially on global events have some health issues are quite normal, it just depends it will be serious or not and how to solve the problem by the organization (Eurosurveillance, 2006).

There were some other infectious disease events during the World Cup event. For example (Eurosurveillance, 2006), it was reported the biggest measles outbreak was related the event in Germany. The situation was concerned by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) and it had been rising, visitors were also given warning by various European national public health institutes during the event. Totally, 1406 measles cases were found in North Rhine-Westphalia between 1 Jan and 7Jun 2006, when the World Cup began, the number of cases still increased. Another infectious disease event was an outbreak of haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Hambury and Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany, and 15 cases were found totally (Eurosurveillance, 2006).

9. The World Cup and its sponsors:

Totally, there were 15 sponsors such as Yahoo, Budweiser, McDonald’s, Gillette, Toshiba Philips and so on, they had to pay a heavy of cost to be called as an “Official Partner” of the mega event (Times, 2006). Furthermore, there were six national suppliers such as Postbank, ODDSET, Deutsche Bahn and so on, it was said that they had to paid around thirteen million Euro to use the rights of Fifa logos and trademarks on their advertising, it was a quite big amount of money. After the event, it was reported that although the demand was over supply, Fifa would make most of the money through the sponsorship deal, in fact, the agreement of the deal was worth over seven hundred million Euro.

The problem was appeared, if Fifa’s exclusivity was not guaranteed no one would agree to pay the money to Fifa, and the contract was all according safeguard Fifa’s position for every eventuality. It was an example; there was an agreement with Hamburger Sportverein (HSV) for the use of its stadium in Hamburg. Obviously HSV has its own sponsor, AOL, and the stadium is always called “AOL Arena Stadium”. During the World Cup, the name was changed to “Fifa World Cup Stadium Hamburg”, Yahoo took the opportunity to become the title sponsor in this period of time and a legal agreement had been enshrined (Times, 2006).

It had to be mindful the feeling on non-alcoholic drinks sponsors by Fifa, the Coca Cola. Totally (Times, 2006), there were 12 official fan festivals in those host cities, the contract with Coca Cola was that to supply of virtually every other drink. Because of Coca Cola, many milk suppliers became angry, because they had to wait Coca Cola agreed to supply non-flavoured milk product.

It was said that (Times, 2006), brand protection is very important to the organization of the World Cup 2006 by Max Duthie, a sport lawyer with Hammonds. He also said (Times, 2006), “Lawyers have been intimately involved in devising strategies and drafting legal agreements to prevent ambush marketing.” He continued to add, “Fifa will have been liaising, too, with local authorities and the police in order to prevent, as a hypothetical example, Pepsi turning up before a game and handing out thousands of Pepsi T shirts to fans, to that, once inside, sections of the ground could appear devoted to Pepsi. It was said that, in the UK trading standards officers always get involve with event organizes to flight with counterfeit merchandising and intellectual property infringement at sports event (Times, 2006).

Actually, the local authorities were persuaded to help Fifa to clamp down on trade mark infringement, and it had been criticised in Germany. At that time, the trademark protection was not the responsibility of public authorities. The official list of licensed manufacturers and samples of their products were sent to customs, because Fifa wanted to protect their own rights.

Anyway, it was just the tip of the iceberg although Fifa was fighting for themselves hardly. Ticketing conditions was another problem Fifa had to consider, they planned it carefully to prevent touting. This problem was not only on this event, it is an increasing global problem in modern football. There were some potential intellectual property infringement, such as player disciplinary issues and anti doping regulations, and those mean that when the event was begun, lawyers could not stop their work.

“We receive numerous queries from businesses who want to check that their campaigns do not infringe Fifa’s intellectual property. Like many rights holders in modern sport, Fifa protect their rights aggressively, so anyone thinking of exploiting the buzz around the World Cup for advertising purposes has to be very careful, Nick White, a sports lawyer with Couchman Harrington said that (Times, 2006).

The inter relationship has never been complex that between sponsors, rights holders, teams, players and spectators, and it has never more intertwined with the law. Just before the World Cup kicked off, the chairman of Crystal Palace Simon Jordan caged his former employee Iain Dowie with his legal action. It is hard to be thought that this chairman was so rely upon to this post employment few years ago.

The World Cup 2006 was not just between players, spectator, organization, local people, the government and so on, stakeholders had a quite big range such as lawyer. Something looks like very simple, but actually it is not (Times, 2006).

10. The social impacts from the World Cup 2006:

It is known that all sport events have different range of impacts to the community, especially on host communities, sometimes they have focused on economic rather than the social effects. Social impacts have been identified as (Jones, 2007); “changes in the structure and functioning of patterned social ordering that occur in conjunction with an environmental, technological or social innovation or alteration.”

Munich is an example. According a study (310 people was surveyed), 88% of people supported the strengthening of the sense of communities and the relationship improvement between people of different ethnic origin, over 50% of them agreed it strongly and only 8% of them disagreed (Jones, 2007).

In terms of the quality of life becomes important. In Munich (Jones, 2007), the co-hosting of the World Cup 2006 led to an increase in shopping facilities was disagreed by 70% people. Therefore, the government used another way to solve it, it was to extend the opening time for shops in the city centre, and also it was allowed them to open on Sunday. Two-thirds respondents thought that, it was a positive impact, actually they prefer to go shopping on Sunday rather than on Saturday. Another impact was because the World Cup, related events have been increased.

The World Cup gave a lot of benefit to the host city such as on economy, social well-being and so on. Because of the event, the city has been renewal, many respondents said that, the improvement of the local infrastructure, although the city’s situation was not bad at before. It is a quotation from the local people (Jones, 2007),” thanks to the good planning by the local council there was no chaos on the road as I am commuting between Munich to Nuremberg every day.” Through the quotation it can be seen, the traffic was quite good during the mega event and the local council had done their work. Although there were a lot of benefits, there also had some disadvantages. For example, noise level was increased during the event (Jones, 2007).

11. The environment:

Through the event, the organization and the government had done a lot, included on environment. It was a project called Green Goal (UNEP, 2006), its aim was to protect the environment, cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation area and electricity generation during the event, defeating the waste mountain was another aim. The project was supported by the United Nations Environment Programme mainly. Because of the project, the greenhouse gas emissions had been reduced drastically, 50% from 3.2 million fans to take public transport (UNEP, 2006). Totally, 70% of journey had been made on public transport, foot or bicycle and it was just 30% made by private car (UNEP, 2006).

12. Conclusion:

In conclusion, the World Cup 2006 tournament was a quite successful mega event in general, only the Olympic game can compare it. Actually, a mega event has to spend a lot of work on it, and the infrastructure could be complicated. This event led a lot of benefit to the country and those host cities such as on economy, generated a lot of jobs and revenue although the country had to spend a big budget to hold the game. However, there were some disadvantages, such as on security, health issue and so forth. Anyway, according to the study, the general situation was accepted by many residents. The next World Cup will be happened on this year, also it will have many impact for the host country on many area. Event is not always been succeeded, it could also be unsuccessful, so just wait and see for the next game.