FIFA’s Chinese World Cup Sponsor Sees a Bright Future
Football fans may recall last year’s World Cup and their big name backers such as Coca-Cola and Sony, but it’s rather unlikely they remember a Chinese solar company who was associated with one of the two biggest sporting events, the Olympics being the other one, in the world.
Image sourced from Rechargenews.com
According a BBC article, there is a solar company called Yingli Energy who was one of FIFA’s World Cup partners, alongside others such as McDonalds & Budweiser, who signed up just four months before the big event for an undisclosed fee. In doing so, the company became FIFA’s first renewable energy and its first Chinese World Cup sponsor.
Well they do say there’s a first for everything!
In June, Yingli Energy signed up again to be one of the sponsors for the 2014 World Cup which is being held in Brazil and who knows… maybe, just maybe, 2014 will be our year!
The company is also a renewable partner of the national football federation US Soccer (that’s football to us), the NFL American Football (we would call it rugby but with padding) team New York Jets and German football club team Bayern Munich.
Darren Thompson, who has 10 years of experience within the solar photovoltaic panel sector, is the manager director of Yingli Green Energy’s subsidiary in Europe.
Speaking at a conference in Amsterdam, he says “It is pretty evident that we like football, but why? Brand awareness comes out of these sponsorships, and differentiates us from our competitors. Football is one of the most popular global sports; it cuts across all corners of the world, and socio-economic groups.”
Mr Thompson says that in the future such factors could enable Yingli to reach developing countries such as India and continents like Africa and South America, where there is a possibility there is intermittent energy supply troubles that the Chinese firm’s products could possibly solve.
Mr Thompson said “Customers are looking for energy solutions, so we need to put more into identifying our brand in the market place. The sun is going to be here for four hundred million years, we hope. This is going to be an important part of the energy mix in the future.”
As part of their work in Africa, they provided solar panels to soccer centres in 20 disadvantaged communities in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup, as a FIFA scheme for its ‘Football for Hope’ campaign.
Mr Thompson carried on to say “The photovoltaic system that is provided to the centre can be used to provide power for pitch floodlighting, laptops, light bulbs, desktop fans, ceiling fans and air conditioning.”
There could be a possibility that in the future all football pitches around the world will have their own solar panels to run their floodlights!
During the football tournament the company saw its share price soar by 46%, helped by the growing media and online interest.
Oliver Takahashi who is head of marketing alliances and event management at FIFA said “At the 2006 World Cup in Germany, FIFA first introduced a green concept, around things like fuel and transportation, waste management and recycling. With green issues getting bigger and bigger, it was important for us to have a renewable energy company. We also wanted to have a partnership with a company from China, which is a key market, and one where football is growing from the grassroots to the top.”
Mr Takahashi previously worked for Reebok and sports marketing group ISL. He also worked on the Japanese side of the staging of 2002 World Cup, which was held jointly with South Korea.
After Yingli’s four month dash before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, they are hoping to make the most of its lead-in time to the next cup.
The company will also be powering the FIFA and local organising committee headquarters.
Yingli’s Mr Thompson finished saying “We are also approaching stadiums in Brazil to see about providing green solar panel electricity, not only for the World Cup but as a legacy for the future years.”
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