As you might have heard, we Germans are currently hosting the 2006 soccer World Cup.
Until now, the reactions from both inside Germany and from other countries are almost 100% positive and Germany's image in the world is getting better. Newspapers all over the world say that we finally managed to get over our "Second World War Trauma", because in the past, we were very careful about being patriotic since we didn't want it to be misunderstood as Nazi style behavior.
But with having the WC in our country, everything seems to be perfect: putting a German flag on top of your car is no longer a problem and everybody can see that we are quite good hosts and that we have learned our lesson from what the generations before had done wrong.
You might ask yourself now: OK, what's the problem then? Everybody is having fun, enjoying the WC, Germany got a better image and so on...
But there is one big problem most of you are not aware of: money.
This WC is more commercial than it has been before, and the greed of the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) results in some very disturbing and funny facts you should have known:
First of all, the FIFA had the idea to copyright over 800 words and phrases like “Germany 2006” which are mostly common language. Even combining words like “World Championship” and “2006” was seen as copyright violation. According to the FIFA, if someone used one or more of these phrases, he should pay for it to the FIFA, even it was a magazine or newspaper reporting about the cup. Doesn’t sound like freedom of speech, does it?
Luckily, the press in Germany revolted against this idea and now everybody can use the phrases again unless he wants to advertise a product with them.
But why is the FIFA so strict about using such words? Well, there are 21 big companies like Coca Cola which paid over 790 million Euros to be official sponsors of the WC. In the opinion of the FIFA, they should be the only ones which can advertise their products by referring to the WC. As a result, only official sponsors are allowed to advertise their product in a certain area around each of the stadiums. Unfortunately, some of the local soccer clubs have the name of their sponsor in the title of their stadium, for example, the stadium of our most successful club, Bavaria Munich, is called “Allianz Arena” (“Allianz” is a huge German insurance company). But “Allianz” isn’t one of the official sponsors, thus the big “Allianz” label on top of the stadium had to be removed and all media have to call it “World Cup stadium Munich” instead of saying its real name.
And it’s getting even worse: As you might know, we Germans and especially the Bavarians have very good beer. But if you enter a stadium, you can only buy Budweiser and no local beer, even if there are some of our most important breweries in the same city.
Imagine, we have a WC in Germany which is famous for its beer, but we have to drink American beer! (Nothing against America, but this fact is quite ridiculous.)
The same happens concerning cars: we have famous brands in Germany (Audi, BMW and Mercedes, …) which are known all over the entire world, but an Asian company (Hyundai) paid more money to the FIFA, consequently they are the only car brand which can call itself an official sponsor.
But Hyundai had to face a serious problem: since we are proud of our German cars, there are not many people using ones made in Asia or anywhere else. As a consequence, Hyundai didn’t have enough cars to transport all of the players and VIPs, thus they had to borrow cars from Mercedes / BMW etc which must have large Hyundai logos on them to cover their original brand.
And finally, my private favorite in the list of the FIFA’s efforts to make as much money as possible:
As mentioned above, our most successful soccer club, Bavaria Munich, has a stadium called “Allianz Arena”. It is quite new and was built by Bavaria Munich and another club from Munich. This last club got into financial trouble, and Bavaria Munich decided to buy this club’s part of the stadium. Now BM is the only owner of the stadium, but as long as there are WC games in it, they have to pay a lot of money to the FIFA to be able to watch the games in their own stadium.
This is pretty much as if you invite some friends to your house and would have to pay them in order to use your own bathroom
The FIFA even made our government pass a law that they don’t have to pay taxes, otherwise they would have withdrawn the WC from Germany. This saves them from spending hundreds of millions of Euros, quite clever…
As you can see, concerning the WC, we are currently in total control of the FIFA. They are making a lot of money, and I just wanted to provide you some background about what’s going on. I hope you find it quite interesting
If you can read German, take a look at the following article:
http://stern.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/ … l?nv=ct_cb
It describes some of the facts mentioned above, including others I was too lazy to put in this post
Until now, the reactions from both inside Germany and from other countries are almost 100% positive and Germany's image in the world is getting better. Newspapers all over the world say that we finally managed to get over our "Second World War Trauma", because in the past, we were very careful about being patriotic since we didn't want it to be misunderstood as Nazi style behavior.
But with having the WC in our country, everything seems to be perfect: putting a German flag on top of your car is no longer a problem and everybody can see that we are quite good hosts and that we have learned our lesson from what the generations before had done wrong.
You might ask yourself now: OK, what's the problem then? Everybody is having fun, enjoying the WC, Germany got a better image and so on...
But there is one big problem most of you are not aware of: money.
This WC is more commercial than it has been before, and the greed of the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) results in some very disturbing and funny facts you should have known:
First of all, the FIFA had the idea to copyright over 800 words and phrases like “Germany 2006” which are mostly common language. Even combining words like “World Championship” and “2006” was seen as copyright violation. According to the FIFA, if someone used one or more of these phrases, he should pay for it to the FIFA, even it was a magazine or newspaper reporting about the cup. Doesn’t sound like freedom of speech, does it?
Luckily, the press in Germany revolted against this idea and now everybody can use the phrases again unless he wants to advertise a product with them.
But why is the FIFA so strict about using such words? Well, there are 21 big companies like Coca Cola which paid over 790 million Euros to be official sponsors of the WC. In the opinion of the FIFA, they should be the only ones which can advertise their products by referring to the WC. As a result, only official sponsors are allowed to advertise their product in a certain area around each of the stadiums. Unfortunately, some of the local soccer clubs have the name of their sponsor in the title of their stadium, for example, the stadium of our most successful club, Bavaria Munich, is called “Allianz Arena” (“Allianz” is a huge German insurance company). But “Allianz” isn’t one of the official sponsors, thus the big “Allianz” label on top of the stadium had to be removed and all media have to call it “World Cup stadium Munich” instead of saying its real name.
And it’s getting even worse: As you might know, we Germans and especially the Bavarians have very good beer. But if you enter a stadium, you can only buy Budweiser and no local beer, even if there are some of our most important breweries in the same city.
Imagine, we have a WC in Germany which is famous for its beer, but we have to drink American beer! (Nothing against America, but this fact is quite ridiculous.)
The same happens concerning cars: we have famous brands in Germany (Audi, BMW and Mercedes, …) which are known all over the entire world, but an Asian company (Hyundai) paid more money to the FIFA, consequently they are the only car brand which can call itself an official sponsor.
But Hyundai had to face a serious problem: since we are proud of our German cars, there are not many people using ones made in Asia or anywhere else. As a consequence, Hyundai didn’t have enough cars to transport all of the players and VIPs, thus they had to borrow cars from Mercedes / BMW etc which must have large Hyundai logos on them to cover their original brand.
And finally, my private favorite in the list of the FIFA’s efforts to make as much money as possible:
As mentioned above, our most successful soccer club, Bavaria Munich, has a stadium called “Allianz Arena”. It is quite new and was built by Bavaria Munich and another club from Munich. This last club got into financial trouble, and Bavaria Munich decided to buy this club’s part of the stadium. Now BM is the only owner of the stadium, but as long as there are WC games in it, they have to pay a lot of money to the FIFA to be able to watch the games in their own stadium.
This is pretty much as if you invite some friends to your house and would have to pay them in order to use your own bathroom
The FIFA even made our government pass a law that they don’t have to pay taxes, otherwise they would have withdrawn the WC from Germany. This saves them from spending hundreds of millions of Euros, quite clever…
As you can see, concerning the WC, we are currently in total control of the FIFA. They are making a lot of money, and I just wanted to provide you some background about what’s going on. I hope you find it quite interesting
If you can read German, take a look at the following article:
http://stern.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/ … l?nv=ct_cb
It describes some of the facts mentioned above, including others I was too lazy to put in this post
Last edited by pX|SithLord (2006-06-23 10:04:07)
