World Cup Copyright in Affiliate Marketing Campaigns: Play It Safe
This post is also available in:
PT
We bet you have the most ambitious plans for the World Cup campaign. Imagine the traffic volumes and overall excitement! What can be a better time for affiliate marketing?
Probably, some of you have already prepared a pack of stunning creatives to run with the ads. Great job!
But are you sure you can use all of them?
The point is that everything related to the World Cup is surrounded by the Great and Terrible Copyright. Breaking the copyright rules when running FIFA-related ads is easier than you think!
Don’t worry, though: we have the most straightforward guidelines for you.
Read them and play it safe!
Copyright and Intellectual Property Basics
To make things clear from the very beginning: everything created by FIFA is its intellectual property. It includes all its emblems, logotypes — and even the event’s name and slogan, too!
You can’t use anything related to this intellectual property in your ad campaigns.
You’ll probably ask: and what about, say, Coca-Cola ads with FIFA logos? How could this be possible:
Well, there are exceptions. You can only use FIFA’s logos and naming if you are its official partner. Like Coca-Cola traditionally is, yeah. The list of exceptions includes the following:
- FIFA official partners
- FIFA sponsors
- FIFA regional sponsors
It’s easy: if you have a contract with the World Cup allowing you to promote your products using their logo, go for it. If you don’t — you will break the rules.
What Is Not Allowed?
— So, is it prohibited to even use the wording ‘FIFA World Cup?
You might be surprised, but yes, it is. Thanks to the World Cup organizers, their guidelines on advertising campaigns from non-official partners are very clear.
Long story short, let’s see what you CAN’T use in your landing pages, pre-landers, push notifications, etc.
World Cup Logos
Here is the official list of FIFA’s Intellectual Property related to visual representation.
You can NOT insert anything of these in your campaign’s creatives — under no circumstances (unless you are an official partner).
Even if you take your own picture of something with the FIFA logo, emblem, or mascot, you can’t use it for commercial purposes.
World Cup Naming
Yes, all official names of the World Cup Brand are also under copyright. Here they are if you were curious:
- FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022
- FIFA World Cup
- FIFA
- World Cup
- World Cup 2022
- Copa Mundial
- Coupe Du Monde
- Mundial
- Qatar 2022
- قطر 2022
- فيفا وورلد كوب
- كأس العالم
- فيفا
- وورلد كوب 2022
- Expect Amazing — the official slogan
Remember, that even if you translate these titles into another language or add the Trademark symbol (™), you will still break the copyright law. ‘Copa Mundial’ is also a no go!
FIFA Official Typeface
The typeface of the FIFA logo is also intellectual property. So, you can’t create a landing page with a header using this typeface — even if you don’t write anything about the World Cup at all.
The thing is you mustn’t create even a slight impression that your offer is FIFA’s property — if it’s really not.
Football Teams
So you are running an iGaming offer and want users to join for the sake of wagering on the popular top match.
The Team 1 vs. Team 2 logos in the ad seems the most obvious idea for a creative. Obvious — and, unfortunately, prohibited.
It’s not legal to use the names or logos of the football teams in your advertising campaigns. That’s it.
Football Players
Okay, the last hope: celebrities! Well, we need to disappoint you here, too:
You can’t advertise your offers using photos of football players — even the stop frames from matches.
So, no chance you can have Ronaldo’s image promoting some VPN service. Unless you have a contract with Ronaldo, of course, ?
Counterfeits
Be careful with the offers you are promoting, too. There are plenty of people longing to make a fast buck on hype — and so they start selling various goods related to the World Cup.
If they are not authorized by FIFA to do it, they are evidently breaking the law. For example, a random entrepreneur can’t just print the World Cup logo on a T-Shirt and sell it without special permission. It relates to any kind of production — even the festive cupcakes with a FIFA mascot!
So, make sure the offer you want to run doesn’t infringe the copyright law, too.
What Will Happen If I Break the Rules?
As you guess, you will barely get away with breaking the copyright policies of such an event. Still, having some naughty thoughts of kicking back and using FIFA logos?
Let’s see what may happen if you give in to temptation:
- FIFA will send you a cease-and-desist letter. It’s not the worst situation, too: you are warned but not punished yet. Anyway, you will need to delete your ad as soon as you get this ‘good-luck letter.’ Not really inspiring, especially if you have already spent some budget on it.
- Litigation. Yes, it’s also pretty possible and may result in some significant fines. What is more, there have already been several arrests related to FIFA copyright infringement: the Qatar police detailed people selling clothes with the World Cup logos and perfume in the World Cup-branded bottles. Of course, these sellers had nothing to do with the official World Cup partnership.
Perfectly Legal Ads Ideas
Wow, that’s pretty harsh! It seems like you can’t do literally anything related to the World Cup.
Don’t worry: it’s not so. There are plenty of options that won’t put you at any violation threat. Your campaigns can be more than successful without a single pixel from the FIFA logos.
Idea 1: National Colors
You can’t use team logos, but nobody banned country flags! You can safely use them in your creatives.
There are basically two options: you can replace team logos with these flags or use the national colors as the image background. It’s also possible to try images of models (not real players, remember!) dressed in country-flag-painted clothes or holding a flag.
For example, here is how you can advertise something related to a particular game:
And this one is more metaphorical: this VPN ad color scheme reminds us of the Saudi Arabia flag and can positively trigger the die-hard fans:
Idea 2: Football Memes
Ready to keep your finger on the pulse during the whole World Cup period? Can you catch every single event happening at the football game and going viral? If so, try using it in your campaigns!
For example, do you remember how Zidane hit Materazzi back in 2006? It was a scandal, it was shocking — and it was on everybody’s lips. So, it didn’t take long for brands to film parodies of this incident for their ads.
Such trends will fade as quickly as they appear, so stay always tuned to create something like this.
Besides, you can simply use something funny or cute to kill the banner blindness:
Idea 3: Neutral Football-Related Creatives
You can easily go without anything too mind-blowing. Just apply your typical practices for sports creatives, that’s it. It’s absolutely legal to use the following elements in your creatives:
- Footballs
- Models representing football players
- Sports fans
- Cheerleaders
- Gloves
- Boots
- Goals
- Girls in sportswear
Use all of this — just make sure all images are royalty-free or you have permission to use them for commercial purposes.
We hope it wasn’t super scary — but forewarned is forearmed. The sky-high traffic volumes will do their thing — even if you never mention anything related to sports in your campaigns during the World Cup.
— So no problem, officer!
Want to talk about that? Join our super useful Telegram chat!
