In what may have been the second strangest incident of the 2006 World Cup, after Zinedine Zidane’s clattering head butt, several Dutch supporters were forced to remove their trousers and support their team in underpants. This was after officials told the supporters to remove their orange trousers because the outfit carried the name of a company that was not an official sponsor of the tournament (the trousers were part of a supporter’s campaign and were bought by a quarter of a million Holland supporters during the tournament).

The incident sparked much discussion about the lengths to which a governing body of a large sports event should go to protect the rights of sponsors, with some seeing the act as an assault on fans’ freedoms.

But the practice of companies trying to gain publicity from an event when they are not official sponsors of the event, known as ‘ambush marketing’, has long been a feature of large sporting events – and the bane of sponsors who have paid large amounts for sponsorship rights.

In South Africa the practice first sprang into the public consciousness during the 1996 Comrades Marathon, when competitors of the official sponsors pledged money to the South African Paralympics team for every runner who finished the race with a sticker carrying that company’s logo on their face. 

In the 2003 Cricket World Cup the issue again raised its head at a South African event, when Indian players threatened not to play in the tournament in protest against the length of time before and after the event that they were disallowed from endorsing their personal sponsors. For many of the players this posed a threat to contracts with their personal sponsors, and therefore to their income.

But for sporting bodies, occasional accusations of heavy-handedness are a small price to pay for the protection afforded to sponsors by strictly enforcing legislation against ambush marketing. Dr. Owen Dean, a partner at Spoor & Fisher, says that in order for sponsors to agree to fund an event they must have a guarantee that their rights will be protected.

“If they don’t get value for money they won’t sponsor events in the future,” he says, adding that organisations like FIFA will not award a country an event without such guarantees.

South African legislation on ambush marketing is among the strictest in the world, and offenders face steep fines and even jail time. Although such legislation is not unique to South Africa Dean says that it has been instrumental in the country winning the right to host large events – and influential. “When we pitched for the 2003 World Cup the ICC said that one of the conditions was that this legislation was in place and when the 2007 World Cup went to the West Indies they adopted legislation similar to ours,” he says.

Although marketers are always likely try and piggyback on highly publicised events, certain of these can achieve the status of ‘protected’ events and claim legal protection against ambush marketing. And while this may mean that Pepsi drinkers have to go thirsty at a Coke-sponsored event, or vice versa, Dean says the average person wearing a branded t-shirt is unlikely to be hassled at a protected event like the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Marketers who push their luck with several branded items, however, will have to pack some extra clothes.