Let’s say you have a car and you want to sell it. What is the first thing you are going to do to get to the goal – make money with the product (car) you have in your hands? Advertise it in newspapers or on websites? Spread flyers on the streets? Trying as hard as you can to let people know you have a nice car for sale so they can be interested in buying it?
If you have a company, then, and therefore more money available to bet on promoting the product that you sell yourself, I imagine it will boost your advertising. Seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?
Well, maybe not for CONMEBOL.
To give you an idea, tickets for the women’s Copa America games began to be sold with less than 15 days to go before the start of the tournament. This over the internet. At physical points of sale, tickets were made available just a week before.
But to sell tickets you have to publicize the competition, right? Reports from those who are in Armenia, home of the Brazilian team in the first games of the Copa América, are that there is no sign that there is an important soccer competition taking place there. There is no advertising at the airport or in the main points of the city.
If you arrive there today without knowing about the tournament, you will probably leave without finding out, as you won’t come across anything that informs you about the event. Detail: the matches of the Brazilian team should arouse great local interest, since it is the team to be beaten in the competition, the current champion, even. With a little effort, Conmebol could sell a few thousand tickets for the match – if it did the bare minimum.
The fact that the women’s Euro is taking place at the same time as the Copa América (coincided with the postponement of the pandemic) makes the situation even more embarrassing for Conmebol. Of the 700,000 tickets available for the European competition, more than 500,000 have already been sold. On the first day, the attendance record was already broken – the game between England and Austria at Old Trafford had a full house, with almost 69,000 people.
The opening match of the Copa América between Colombia and Paraguay, in Cali, had just over 12,000 fans in attendance. Could have a lot more. In June of this year, the final of the Colombian Women’s Championship had 37 thousand fans.
What did UEFA do differently from Conmebol? Planning. Disclosure. One hundred days before the event, Uefa was already announcing the sale of tickets for the Euro. There was even publicity on Tower Bridge, one of London’s main tourist attractions. It’s almost impossible to be in Queen’s Land and not know that a Euro is happening there.
And, like the South American entity, the CBF also shows its disregard for women’s football in this Copa América. As reported by Gabriela Moreira, from Globo, the confederation did not send any representative to accompany the women’s team in Colombia. Something that happens in any tournament for the men’s team – even the youth team.
It is curious that, among eight vice-presidents and eight directors, no one has managed to be available to be in Colombia with the women’s team. The same leaders who appear to question the work of the technical commission, but do not insist on accompanying it at all. As coach Pia Sundhage said at the press conference after the 4-0 victory in the competition debut:
“I want to qualify for the World Cup, but I also hope that over the years I can change the reality of women’s football in Brazil. A lot is said about equal pay, but I expect equal treatment. Some things are bigger than medals”.
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