Companies "pay dearly to sponsor the World Cup," according to Mike Murphy of QUARTZ. There is "no event more widely watched" than football's premier tournament -- over 3 billion people tuned in in '14 -- and FIFA is expected to generate around $1.6B in revenue from marketing this year's event. But "instead of paying to emblazon its logo on match-side billboards, Apple took a different tack" -- and it "may not even have been on purpose." Players from around the world have been seen wearing Apple’s AirPods wireless earbuds and Beats headphones, which Apple also owns, before matches, disembarking planes or "even returning to their home countries in defeat." FIFA has "pretty strict rules" around what it calls "ambush marketing." This is why any player you see wearing Beats headphones before a game, for example, "has the company’s logo taped over." But both Beats and AirPods "have a distinctive look that is difficult to mask, even with the branding obscured." While covered-up Beats were a "big marketing win" for Apple at the 2014 World Cup, just months after it had acquired the company, AirPods "are a more subtle sell this time around." Apple was not "immediately available to comment on whether it was working with specific players at the World Cup," although it definitely has worked with football players in the past to market its Beats headphones. Perhaps "coincidentally," Apple has been running an advertising campaign during the World Cup entitled, “How to shoot Football on iPhone X" (QUARTZ, 7/9).
