Business Report: Copa Centenario adds five more sponsors
- by Paul Kennedy @pkedit, May 11, 2016
These five companies join Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Makita, Nike, Samsung, Sprint, State Farm and TAG Heuer as tournament partners. In total, fifteen official partners have aligned with the event.
The most notable name is MasterCard, a former FIFA sponsor that was involved in a much-publicized lawsuit with FIFA that ended with it receiving a $90 million settlement and Visa taking over as FIFA's sponsor in the financial services category after Mastercard's 16-year run. Mastercard was a sponsor of the 2015 Copa America in Chile and is a UEFA Champions League sponsor.
"As a long-tenured partner, we are thrilled to be uniting with Copa to bring the biggest soccer event in the Americas to the United States this year," said Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing & communications officer for MasterCard. "Soccer fans worldwide are extremely passionate about their sport, and this tournament represents a fantastic opportunity for us to co-create with our cardholders some truly once-in-a-lifetime Priceless experiences."
Nine sponsors are based in the United States, and one each in France, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and Switzerland.
Now if they could only sell some tickets. For any games not involving Messi, Brazil, US and Mexico this tournament is on its way to being a complete bust. World Cup like? Yeah right. Tell that to the American public who basically has no idea what this tournament is. Another great job by US Soccer.