The Hindu Business Line : Scoring with a sponsorship

Every four years, the eyes of the world turn to the largest sporting event on the planet — the FIFA World Cup. And for the first time an Indian company, Satyam Computer Services, along with global companies such as Anheuser-Busch, McDonald’s and MTN, will be a sponsor.

The Hyderabad-based software company will have global rights for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa; the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil and the two FIFA Confederation Cups, which fall within the 2007-2014 period. As the Official IT Services Provider to the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups, Satyam, which already enjoys a business relationship with FIFA, will play a crucial role in developing the core IT event management system for FIFA and its service partner for IT, accommodation and hospitality.

Thierry Weil, Director, Marketing, FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), shared details with eWorld on Satyam’s role in helping FIFA organise the massive events. Excerpts from the e-mail interview:

Why Satyam?

Satyam is a global, India-based company, which FIFA selected as an IT service provider before Satyam showed interest in a sponsorship. FIFA was interested in partnering with Satyam for various reasons, including development of IT services for the FIFA World Cup. There is also an opportunity to support football’s development in India. In addition, Satyam shares FIFA’s ideals expressed in the FIFA mission — to use football as a tool to touch the world and build a better future.

An example…

For instance, Satyam is a significant investor in South Africa and leads a skills development initiative for South Africans under the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) programme. Currently, more than 80 South African students are enrolled in the year-long technical training programme at the company’s campus in Hyderabad.

With presence in more than 57 countries, Satyam can leverage its global expertise and enable FIFA not only to deliver world-class events but also focus on generating a long-lasting legacy for the host countries through hiring and educating local event staff, for example in the build-up of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Satyam as sponsor

Being the official IT services sponsor of the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups, Satyam will play a mission-critical role by developing tools that help run the events. It will provide event management systems to support key areas of accreditation, transportation, volunteer management and asset tracking, and operations support during all phases of FIFA events.

Satyam will also develop an extranet platform for FIFA. This platform will revolutionise the way FIFA and its member associations work together as well as support key FIFA activities, such as relations with the media, licensed broadcasters, and the commercial affiliates. It will also provide a collaborative tool to the development programmes of FIFA; to the football medical doctors worldwide and to referees.

The elite six

Satyam is the fourth company after Anheuser-Busch, McDonald’s and MTN to join the proposed six-member group of FIFA World Cup Sponsors under FIFA’s commercial hierarchy. The group comprises six FIFA Partners, six FIFA World Cup Sponsors and six National Supporters. FIFA has already signed up with Adidas, Hyundai, Sony, Coca-Cola, Visa and Emirates Airline as FIFA Partners. In addition, Telkom SA was recently announced as being the second National Supporter, after FNB, of the 2010 FIFA World Cup with further announcements due soon.

IT support

It is a real partnership with Satyam as FIFA (in particular through MATCH AG — the world governing body of football’s arm to manage accommodation, ticketing and IT) and Satyam teams will work together on a daily basis throughout the next seven years to develop a suite of event management tools (such as accreditation system, media channel — the online media centre of FIFA accessible through FIFA.com), which will enable FIFA not only to deliver world class events but, equally important, to focus on generating a long lasting legacy for the host countries.

Massive event

The immense global interest in this event of course cranks up the pressure behind the scenes.

With around 3 million spectators in the 10 stadiums, and around 30 billion television viewers expected to follow the competition, FIFA has become one of the world’s heaviest IT network users This places non-stop demands on critical systems, from accreditation and security to logistics and match results.

The IT Solution must deploy a dynamic, secure and highly reliable event network that integrates all 10 FIFA World Cup stadiums into one seamless entity. At FIFA, we rely on our IT Partners, namely Satyam, Telkom and MTN, to help us successfully manage what is effectively 10 simultaneous large-scale implementation projects.

Huge volumes of data

To give an idea on the extent of data flow during a FIFA World Cup, here are some figures: During the 2006 FIFA World Cup, over 21 terabytes of data of voice and data traffic were transferred over the FIFA network.

This is equivalent to nearly eight years of continuous MP3 download-and-play music and equals the 24 million volumes of books, photographs, recordings and other information available at the United States’ Library of Congress, the largest library in the world. With 45,000 network connections, 30,000 network devices and over 21 terabytes (or 21,000,000,000 bytes) of data, it was the largest converged communication network ever built for a sporting event.

Total spend

The total FIFA IT spending consists of two parts: the overall event IT Solution operation as well as the IT operation to support the broadcast operation. We cannot name, at this stage, an absolute figure but Satyam represents about 13-16 per cent of the total event IT Solution budget for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

raja@thehindu.co.in

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