Mark’s words in the Daily Express – Qatar bans alcohol at World Cup stadiums
Many people think that Budweiser is to real beer as a McDonald’s burger is to a 28oz grass-fed tenderloin steak.
It therefore says a lot about the PR disaster that is the Qatar World Cup that Bud are the tournament’s biggest reputational winners so far.
Sponsorship is about awareness but it’s an expensive way for a brand to be subliminal background noise. It might sound biased coming from me, but PR – earned exposure on independent platforms – is a much more effective route into consumer consciousness.
By banning beer from stadiums so late on, Fifa and Qatar gave Budweiser global coverage beyond their wildest dreams.
So what if fewer fans sup their beer and a few wiseacres quip on social media that it is Qatar’s most positive contribution to human rights? This is a massive PR win for Bud.
The polar opposite can be said for Qatar and Fifa. The beer scandal is the tip of an iceberg that includes accusations of match fixing, Danish journalists being manhandled off air and David Beckham being held to ransom by Joe Lycett – on top of historic criticism of the regime’s human rights abuses and mediaeval attitude towards the LGBT community.
Hosting the World Cup was an enormous soft power exercise for Qatar but it’s turned into a historic PR disaster that has exposed the country’s ugly global reputation.
The same goes for Fifa. Accusations swirl over how Qatar was awarded the tournament and with each day, as the hosts grow more erratic and draconian, it becomes clearer that Fifa has no regard for the game, its fans, the law or even basic human morality.