Dutch fans are forced to remove perfectly ordinary and decent trousers, just because they’re manufactored by non-FIFA sponsors. FIFA is already making billions of dollars and led by the throughly corrupt Blatter idiot, now they want to enforce clothing regulations on account of nothing but what some sponsors demand. Fuck them.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__sport/&articleid=275252
How on earth did those people not get tickets for indencency?!! That is outrageous, and it just insured I will NEVER buy a Yahoo! (or the other sponsers) product. :mad:
Because I very rarely get to: I agree with Rune. Things like this, and even more so the examples of Pepsi cans getting confiscated at the gates, are examples of brand control run riot to an absolutely ridiculous extreme. The contempt shown for fans who’ve paid an enormous amount of money to get to their games is horrifying. Protecting sponsors’ investment? I know which brand of beer stories like this make me want to drink, and believe me it isn’t Anheuser-Busch. Not that I would anyway - it’s godawful piss - but it’s the principle of the thing. 
As for my opinions on IP law, I should think countless copyright infringement threads on this board would give the lie to that particular inference. I just happen to think that there’s a line that should be drawn, and it should be drawn before a beer company owns my trousers. This doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with legality; it has to do with basic respect for your customers. I don’t think it’s even sensible for organisers to act in this way, and if Budweiser have any sense they’ll distance themselves from efforts to de-trouser the people they’re trying to market to.
AMEN! I sure as hell am not going to be purchasing those brands, and I am going to write to the companies and tell them why too.
The decision was pants?
I couldn’t buy a concert ticket once as I had a MasterCard and another CC company was a major sponsor of the gig.
Didn’t go and told them I would never be buying a ticket from the company again. I really hate this sort of shit.
A better point is this–why the Hell would anybody want to wear clothing with advertising on it in a public place?
The whole concept is idiotic & degrading, especially it you paid for the stuff.
Because there is no such thing? What do you expect the police to do, fine people for wearing underpants only?
How nice that you’re so enlightened; I suggest you don’t wear them, then. Although if it’s degradation you’re concerned about, I’m surprised that you don’t seem bothered by forcing people to walk around in their underwear. Enough people appear to have found them funny to want to wear them, probably because they’re primarily designed to appeal to a particular nation’s supporters, the beer advertising being only incidental. You have been to a sporting event before, right? It’s no sillier than painting your chest blue or clapping those big pointy foam hands. I have no idea what your vaunted taste has to do with forcing people to take their trousers off.
The news article I saw on SKy News showed that the people who had their pants removed were given some plain orange shorts to don instead, and were provided with a small hut to change in. Also regarding the ‘degradation’ of paying to wear something that has an advertisement on it, In the article it was mentioned that the pants in question had been given away by the brewery in question (Bavaria) specifically to get the publicity at the World Cup.
In this they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
So Fifa’s business plan really is.
Step 1. Take Dutch pants
step 2. ??????
step 3. Profit?
Someone should have told them the whole whole thing was a joke. 
That decision just baffles me. I hope it bites them hard.
Well, I’d nuance that a little. But there is no doubt that Bavaria intended the pants to be worn at world cup games (televised and otherwise), parties and other events. They have a lion’s tail on them for heaven’s sake. They also took a big Bavaria van to Germany to hand out the pants and also beer and so on to fans at the World Cup after all. It’s a world cup promotion, it’s been going on for over a year.
Heineken sued Bavaria last year over the pants and lost; a judge here said football fans could wear whatever they liked.
There is also little doubt that most knew by game time that there was a chance they would be required to strip off at the Ivory Coast game. This of course caused even more people to go get a pair of the pants. The way I heard it most of them were wearing orange underwear for that very reason. (My own admittedly limited survey does not, er, support the notion that Dutch guys ordinarily wear orange underwear).
All in all a brilliant bit of guerilla marketing. Final score: bavaria: 2; budweiser: 0.
I don’t see how. This incident has absolutely nothing to do with intellectual property law in general or trademark law in particular.
I suppose because if you believe a company can go to extreme lengths to protect its (paid for) advertising exclusivity at an event, you would support this decision.
Personally, I think it would have been funny if Bavaria had issued orange underwear with their name on it; that might have been amusing.
While I think FIFA went a bit far, they do have to protect their “exclusive sponsors”, otherwise they wouldn’t get as much money from official sponsorship next year. What’s the point of paying FIFA the big bucks if you can simply give our free trousers for much cheaper?
I don’t know if there’s a solution to this, however, apart from FIFA accepting less money from sponsorships. And that’s rather unlikely to happen, corporations being what they are…
Their brand slogan should be: “Your cat has diabetes.”
Bavaria have been very smart here. Giving out the trousers with their brand on it probably didn’t do them any harm with the Dutch. The actual advertising value outside of the initial small scale give out was not that high in global terms.
They have now gotten global publicity because of the actions at the match. A good world cup fluff story will run worldwide due to the fact that a lot of countries follow the competition very closely.
Small win/Big win for Bavaria. They have got a big win.