If there’s one thing that’s certain about the FIFA World Cup it’s that brands pay huge sums to be part of it. And there’s always plenty of tech brands who pay big money to be involved. But there are always some who don’t and try and jump on the bandwagon – and a key area for that is in headphones.
The top tier of ‘FIFA partners’ is reported to pay around $200 million each per four-year cycle. In this bracket is Lenovo who powers the technology behind the tournament (sister brand Motorola is the official smartphone partner). Then there are tens of other partners such as TV and display partner Hisense which sponsor the tournament specifically and costing around half as much. Sports Value suggests that up to $2.8 billion could be spent on sponsorship at the tournament.
But there’s no official headphone partner – and if there’s one thing that footballers like, it’s headphones. You regularly see players walk into stadiums with a huge variety of different cans. Kylian Mbappe, for example, has a deal with high-end brand Loewe. Harry Kane has a deal with eco-audio brand Our Pure Planet. Virgil Van Dijk and Declan Rice are sponsored by JBL. And ex-footballers are also in on the game – notably David Beckham has a deal with Bowers & Wilkins.
Into the World Cup void appears to have stepped Apple’s Beats which seems to be playing the guerrilla marketing game to tease a new pair of headphones – and there appears to be little that FIFA can do about it despite its history of covering up brands at stadiums that aren’t FIFA sponsors and even filing charges with those involved in a particular stunt at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Of course, this feeds into the Streisand effect, where banning those brands actually gives them more exposure.
Beats has many sportspeople on its books and it appears to be using them at the tournament to show off what seems to be an unannounced pair of headphones that don’t match the design of the current Beats Studio Pro or Solo 4 over-ears. Some of the players seen with the new Beats headphones include most-notably Spain’s Lamine Yamal but also South Korea’s Lee Kang-in and the USA’s Antonee Robinson.
They seem to have very large earcups that look very cushioned and in different and very unusual colours such as neon yellow/white (Lee Kang-in) and pink (Lamine Yamal).
Could the ear cushions be interchangeable? The headband also looks very thin compared to current Beats options. Obviously, as we don’t know how they are positioned in the Beats range and so we don’t know about pricing at all – though I personally don’t think they look high-end enough to be, for example, a Beats Studio Pro replacement, though some others have suggested that’e exactly what they are and it would certainly mean a striking new look. The timing could be right, considering that the Beats Studio Pro were officially released on July 19 in 2023. Could an announcement be imminent? And could they be model number A3577, which leaked a few months back?
This approach isn’t too unusual for Beats – last year’s Powerbeats Pro 2 were seen in the wild before launch seen on baseball player Shohei Ohtani who is also an ambassador for Beats – it’s an established playbook for Beats, but the brand will have seen clear opportunity to get them seen during the World Cup.
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