FIFA World Cup & Beer

On this hot summer day, when you see the rows of beer in refrigerators in the convenience store, do you think of the FIFA World Cup for the first time? Similarly, while watching the World Cup matches, is there a glass of cool beer with you?

The FIFA World Cup 2018 is in full swing in Russia, the hometown of vodka. As the game progresses, the enthusiasm of everyone watching matches is constantly being ignited. How to enjoy the passion of C Ronaldo’s “C” machete and hat-trick without a toast! How to calm Messi’s regret about missed penalty kick without a silent cup! And how to wait for the moment the German tank restarts without a glass with tears! This summer, beer matches the World Cup.

The History of FIFA World Cup & Beer

Speaking of the relationship between the World Cup and beer, we can trace it back to the first World Cup in 1930. Many fans of the England team and the Germany team, who were at the scene, were passionate about beer. It was probably since then that they had brought the habits of drinking beer to the World Cup. And in a football match of more than 90 minutes, the wonderful moments are constantly emerging. Therefore, it is more practical to drink a small and cool beer to celebrate than to drink strong vodka. That’s why we often see that the sponsors of the World Cup are brewers, and there has never been a brand of wines.

However, traced back to history, beer is really popular in the World Cup because of a famous football team – the Liverpool team. And who would have thought that Liverpool, as one of the most successful clubs in the history of English football, was established only as a performance at the very beginning? The real purpose was to sell beer.

In 1884, Liverpool brewer John Hudding had built a new stadium, mainly to sell his own beer there. In order to promote sales, he also rented a team from Scotland to play the game, which is the predecessor of Liverpool. This is the earliest history of “football and beer” we can find.

FIFA World Cup Greatly Promote the Beer Industry of Germany

The popularity of German dark beer in the 1960s was the most direct benefit of the World Cup. In 1954, the World Cup was held in Berne, Switzerland. The German team lost two goals in the first eight minutes, then defeated in overtime to win, and finally defeated the arrogant Hungarian gold dynasty by 3:2. At that time, Germany was in the post-war period of pain. This victory has also made the people of the world pay more attention to the economic development of Germany. At the same time, beer was one of the industrial pillars of Germany. It resulted in the German dark beer come to the fore with a reputation for pure and delicate taste. Because the World Cup has helped the beer industry so much, brewers usually have not hesitated to spend heavily to sponsor the event.

FIFA World Cup Enhances the Sales of Beer

According to the statistics of the Tmall e-commerce platform, during the FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil, the search index of beer increased nearly 3 times month-on-month. This is an increase of 27 times compared to the same period of 2013. In the first week of the Brazilian World Cup start, fans purchased 17 million cans of beer from Tmall. With such a huge market, major brewers are spending heavily on advertising to promote sales. Budweiser won the second sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia for over US$100 million. And Tsingtao Brewery also spent tens of million dollars to become the sponsor of the 2018 World Cup broadcast of CCTV, including the advertising spot in and before the World Cup live games.