FIFA collected around 2.8 billion dollars in sponsorship for this World Cup. And yet several brands that paid nothing generated more conversation than the official ones.
What sponsorship money buys
Not the right to talk about football. It buys the right to associate: to call yourself an official partner, to use the emblem and the tournament name in advertising, to appear on the perimeter boards and in the broadcast. That association is a trademark license, and it is only worth anything because the organizer enforces it against everyone else.
Why non-sponsors sometimes win
Because attention is not the same as association. A brand with sharp creative and no license can dominate the conversation while carefully never claiming to be official. This is ambush marketing, and where it stays on the right side of the line it is perfectly legal.
What this means for you
Two lessons. If you buy a license, insist that the licensor enforces it, and get the enforcement obligation in the contract. If you are not buying one, invest in creative that works on its own rather than on borrowed association, because the borrowed kind is what gets litigated.
Either way, protect your own marks first. A brand with an unregistered name has nothing to license and nothing to defend.
What you can actually license
A licence can only reach what the registration covers. In Mexico each application covers one Nice class, so a mark registered for clothing does not license anyone to put it on beverages or on a service. Licensing beyond the registration licenses nothing.
That is why sponsorship programmes rest on broad portfolios rather than a single filing, and why the first step before selling rights is checking which classes you actually hold.
The obligation behind the portfolio is use. Each registration needs its declaration of real and effective use within three months of its third anniversary, and protection survives only for the goods or services declared (article 233 of the Mexican Industrial Property Law). A class registered for licensing but never used is a class you will lose.