HE was supposed to be cuddly, lovable and popular, but in reality the clumsily named lion Goleo VI was none of these. Nobody it seemed wanted Goleo around, least of all German soccer fans.
Goleo is the official German World Cup mascot. But he has been such a flop that with less than a month before the opening match on June 9, Goleo’s maker, Nici, has filed for bankruptcy and the firm’s founder Ottmar Pfaff has been arrested by the police on suspicion of financial irregularities.
“We were having problems with the fact that Goleo hasn’t been a success,” said Uwe Klimach, Nici’s marketing director. “The company is in a serious financial situation.”
Goleo’s fate is a salutary warning to a country that has caught World Cup fever and is hoping to make a mint out of the tournament.
Business confidence remains perky and predictions of GDP growth for this year at 1.6% are greeted as confirmation of the long-expected and often-predicted economic upswing. According to an analysis by Deutsche Postbank, the World Cup alone will account for 0.5 points of this growth.
If it does not happen and the euphoria turns to gloom as both the national team and the economy fail to deliver, Germans will indulge in another favourite pastime — feeling depressed and sorry for themselves.
In the meantime everyone from the government downwards views the World Cup as the event that will pull the country out of five years of economic stagnation.
Certainly Goleo VI was seen as the saviour of troubled toymaker Nici. The firm paid £18m to Fifa for the exclusive rights to make the World Cup mascot. The 2.5-metre tall lion with the shaggy mane lumbered round TV shows and Fifa events. He always seemed out of place, as if he had escaped from Sesame Street. Germany’s most famous presenter, Thomas Gottschalk, likened him to a llama. In the shops Goleo sat on the shelves unloved and unwanted.
The event’s 15 main sponsors have coughed up a total of £465m — £31m each — for exclusive marketing rights from Fifa. This means the likes of Adidas, Deutsche Telekom, Continental and McDonald’s have forked out more in sponsorship this time than for the previous World Cup and the European Cup put together.
For Adidas this has been a price worth paying. Its net profits have already risen by 37% in the first quarter of this year. The company expects that this year total sales of football equipment will reach £820m, boosted by sales of 15m World Cup replica footballs.
Naturally everyone wants a slice of the action. Six smaller sponsors have paid Fifa another £49m — about £8m each — bringing the total to £514m.
Among the most bizarre must rank the food company Reinert. Its marketing ploy is the World Cup sausage. But since when was a sausage round? Undaunted, Reinert is running a television commercial featuring Gerald Asamoah, a national player, kicking a ball that morphs into a spherical edible object with the ingredients of a German sausage.
Then there is another food company marketing the World Cup cake. Yes, you guessed — it is curved. Actually it is a hemisphere of a cake with a goal as a backdrop, more reminiscent of a mole hill painted by an inventive child.
Even the German sex industry has joined in. Beate Uhse, the company founded by a female wartime test pilot, has run up a range of women’s G-strings in various national colours packed inside a football. It also has “sporty vibrators” and a sex video featuring — wait for it — more sport.
Baden-Baden, where the England squad is based, has never been noted for racy living. But with the prospect of thousands of fans, not to mention ranks of journalists, it has suddenly acquired a high-class brothel catering to international tastes.
Another brothel, in Cologne, unfurled a banner, covering one side of the seven-storey building, featuring a blonde taking her top off with the slogan “A Time to Make Girlfriends” — a play on the official World Cup slogan “A Time to Make Friends”. The flags of all the competing nations fluttered outside the entrance.
However, Cologne’s Muslims objected. “Twenty masked men arrived armed with sticks and knives and threatened to bomb the place unless we removed the Saudi and Iranian flags,” said Armin Lobscheid, manager of the brothel. “We felt it was wise to concede.”
To provide accommodation for the estimated 3.5m fans — and show how jolly Germans are — homeowners are offering rooms over the internet. Rooms-worldcup2006.com is the brainchild of Berlin’s Immobilien Scout 24. It calls the service “staying with friends”.
The firm’s Ergin Iyilikci said: “We have 14,000 rooms registered. They are anything from kids’ bedrooms to whole apartments. Expect to pay between €20 and €60 a night. It is a great chance to get to know ordinary Germans and for intercultural experiences. The wives can go shopping and the men can go to the football. We have had inquiries from as far away as Japan and Mexico.
Profits on the fees paid by homeowners to register on the site will go to a foundation to train Germany’s next generation of soccer champions.
Some 1m foreigners are expected in Germany for the World Cup. Intense competition between cities has broken out to capture business from visiting fans, who are likely to spend an average of £200 a day.
Cologne stole the 5,000- strong Brazilian fan club from under the noses of Frankfurt.
“The Brazilian officials arrived in Frankfurt thinking this was where they would base themselves,” said Harald Rosch of the Cologne Sports Office. “One look at the place convinced them they had made a mistake. Frankfurt was boring. All those banks didn’t seem like a fun place to be. One of the Germans showing them round came from Cologne so she whisked them up the Rhine. She mentioned that Cologne was famous for its carnival, and that clicked with the Brazilians instantly.”
The team from Togo is based in the Bavarian town of Wangen. Restaurants are rejigging their menus to keep Togo fans happy with dishes that include fufu (the equivalent of potatoes) and fried lamb in Marmite.
The government has seized on the World Cup as a chance to encourage investors to put their money into Germany. The Invest in Germany agency has enticed 80 of them from countries as diverse as Switzerland and Korea with free tickets to games. Investors running companies with an average turnover of £14m make up the guest list.
Matthias Jung, the project manager, said: “We will show them German success stories such as the automotive industry, life sciences and logistics. The World Cup in Germany is a unique chance to showcase what we are good at. I think the programme will result in significant joint ventures and foreign investors considering buying up German firms.”
By and large German businessmen are in a buoyant mood. The Ifo index of business confidence remains above 105 points, dropping only fractionally against April’s figure.
Gebhard Flaig, an Ifo board member, said: “The almost unchanged reading results from two divergent trends — firms are more positive but they are also more cautious about the next six months.”
Shops, hotels and travel companies are all looking for a share in the £700m expected to be spent by World Cup fans. Even so the mood of caution in the most recent Ifo index is reflected in a survey by the German retailing association. Only 17% of its members expected visible increases in sales as a result of the World Cup.
Consumer electronics will probably be the biggest winner, with households persuaded to go over to flat-screen technology ahead of the competition. Media Markt, the biggest retailer in that market, is cutely offering every buyer a €10 rebate for every goal the national side scores. That may not be as generous as it seems, considering the lack of confidence that Germans have in their own team.
According to the hotel and catering industry, additional earnings of about £350m from the World Cup are anticipated.
However, the biggest boost to the economy has come from the German government. It has spent £165m rebuilding the stadiums in Berlin and Leipzig — the only venues in eastern Germany — and splashed out £2.5 billion on improving transport infrastructure.
Whether any of this results in long-term benefits is questionable. Two key factors are likely to dampen consumer confidence once the memories of the World Cup fade. They are the recently agreed tax package and January’s hike in Vat, taking the personal tax burden to its highest level ever.
Both these measures indicate that Germany considers reducing its debt mountain more urgent than creating an upswing in the economy.
