Dirty Trix at Euro 2008: Brand Protection, Ambush Marketing and Intellectual Property Theft at the European Football Championships

Abstract

This article examines the strategies utilised by UEFA to protect its ‘European Football Championships 2008’ brand from intellectual property theft. In order to protect and maximise the value of the brand, UEFA restricted access to its intellectual property to a number of ‘Official Partners’, and introduced legal and practical strategies to prevent the sale of unofficial merchandise and ‘ambush marketing’ by other companies. However, despite these strategies, unofficial products were produced in vast numbers and ambush marketing campaigns meant that considerable confusion remained as to which companies were ‘official’ partners to the tournament. Additionally, conflicts between official UEFA partners and those connected with the competing teams resulted in all parties engaging in ambush marketing activity. This article details the conflicts and also revisits previous theory on ambush marketing. It concludes that rather than pursuing event-specific anti-ambush legislation, event organisers and competitors need to find consensual solutions to prevent disputes and consumer confusion which may reduce the value of commercial rights for sporting mega-events in the future.

Keywords

• Ambush Marketing
• Counterfeiting
• Intellectual Property
• Sporting Events