Asian Football Confederation getting results after rebrand by FutureBrand Australia

Football is known as the ‘world game’, it enjoys enormous popularity across Europe and South America.

Contrary to common perception, football is also a huge passion point in Asia.

In fact, 1 in 2 football fans around the world live in Asia.

There are more fanatics in China (238m) than in France, Italy, Germany, UK and Spain combined (131m). Asia has become the centre of football fan power and all indicators point to its growing potential.

Our brief from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and Football Marketing Asia (FMA) was to create a branding ecosystem and connected portfolio of compelling brand identities for major AFC men’s, women’s and youth competitions that would elevate these competitions onto the world-stage while incorporating distinct and uniquely Asian characteristics, enticing fans to connect more deeply with AFC football.

Historically, a lack of clarity and consistency meant that the competitions’ full potential and market value could not be realised. For example, the AFC Asian Cup – Asia’s flagship tournament – has been rebranded every cycle with little connection from one competition brand to the next, inhibiting longer- term brand equity growth. Also, major competitions with significant commercial value like the AFC Asian Qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup had no branding at all, diluting rights value.

Consequently, AFC identified the need to introduce a coordinated approach to improve and amplify the value of its competition brands.

Our task was to create a branding ecosystem comprising individual brand identities for AFC competitions as part of a connected portfolio: by emphasising the uniquely Asian football story; presenting visually compelling experiences to fans and assets to broadcast and sponsorship partners; and, growing engagement with Asian football at scale.

Having contributed to 14% absolute market growth and 104m new fans across Asia, the new branding has done just that.

[Source: Turnstile 2021 Football Landscape Report]