Joga Bonito
Joga Bonito, Nike, branded entertainment
A couple of things about the Joga3 futsal tournament I had the opportunity to observe while in Santa Monica for the summer. First, both the production and documentation of the event are in keeping with recent trends in the advertising industry toward branded entertainment. It is tough to discern where Nike's sponsorship ends and the "authentic" love of futsal competition begins; and I even feel that trying to parse out such disparate sporting discourses is a pointless task. There would be no Joga Bonito in the US without Nike, surely, as made clear by the company's donation of $1 million worth of Joga Bonito soccer fields nationwide. There is also no doubt that participants in the newly minted (branded?) phenomenon genuinely enjoy the game, and get something positive out of it. Nike, importantly, long ago lost World Cup sponsorship to Adidas, so their imperative for establishing this new brand of soccer in the United States seems clear enough.
Here is a digital video I made before my digital camera battery died:
On Venice beach, July 9th, 2006, a wide variety of youths aged 13-19 competed for a national Joga3 championship. The Under-13 and Under-19 champions, both boys and girls, earned a trip to train with the "official" (i.e. "regular" soccer) national teams of their age categories. The Under-16 boys and girls got that, plus a trip to Brazil to compete in the global futsal championships.
Brazil is where futsal began. Prior to the start of the competition on July 9th, the organizers had "traditional" capoeira dancers and Brazilian musicians perform on the futsal court. There was also an exhibition match between Brazil's "professional" futsal team and the FC Maheia team from LA. These pre-gaming events connected the subsequent futsal action to a wider cultural network, notably the very cool (and profitable) Brazilian "brand". Spectators were also repeatedly reminded that more than 1.5 million youths participated in the Joga3 nationwide tournament.
The game itself consists of two three-person teams, playing on a mini-pitch with two mini-goals. Ideally, it is to be played "beautifully," with no arguing, no dirty play, no conservative goal guarding, etc. On yellow flags surrounding the main court were the five key tenets of Joga Bonito:
With a visit to the Joga Bonito branding booth, any of these five tenets could be stenciled on to items of clothing, backpacks, skin, etc. Curiously, despite the availability of five different concepts, the only brand sub-brand I saw repeatedly was SKILL:
The crowd's emphasis on the most individualistic of the five tenets was mirrored in the game play itself. Not to say the players were poor sports, or that all (or even most) of them showcased SKILL to the exclusion of the other nobler traits. However, there was a lot of whining. There was arguing about referee calls. There was winning at the cost of "beauty." All of which creates a gap between what Nike says the game is about, and what it is in practice (play).
This sentiment was echoed in the observations of my friend Reed, who was commissioned by Nike's advertising agency, Wieden+Kennedy, to make a documentary of the Joga3 phenomenon for eventual broadcast on the Fox Soccer Channel. Reed, a much-lauded super8 documentary filmmaker in and around Portland, Oregon, enjoyed following the many narrative threads of each team as they went from regional qualifying games, to the semifinals and finals on Venice beach. However, by the time the final round of Joga3 came, play had been transformed and transcended by the hubris of the "media event." Present at the filming of the finals were not only Reed, but half a dozen Fox Soccer Channel cameramen, probably the local news and others looking for sound bites. The Fox brand, along with Jamba Juice and MTV, were riding on the bandwagon Nike had artificially created.
Moreover, Ethan Zohn of Survivor fame made a guest appearance, taping a brief introduction to the competition, to be aired July 21st on the Fox Soccer Channel. Of course, no one in the crowd could hear what Zohn was saying to his cameraman. The crowd was told to applaud and cheer when a director gave us the signal. Zohn's surprise appearance was thus a highly anticlimactic gesture, though I'm sure it will look great, and natural, and exciting when the spot airs on Fox.
MTV VJ Sway was also in attendance, adding to the confusion of who was sponsoring, who was broadcasting, who was narrating the event for the benefit of which and whatever media outlets might eventually be documenting it. Sway gave a shout out to local radio station Power 106, and one can only guess that MTV will air some type of Joga3 content, brought to them, of course, free of charge by Nike.
So what is the future of co-branding? It is obviously hard to say. As more brands partner with other brands, and as brands increasingly narrativize their advertising to make it both more ubiquitous and less overt, the boundaries between products and their partners, between "reality" and consumption may indeed break down. The most interesting thing to me was the way that transforming the finals into a "media event" overwhelmed the actual event, as cameramen and hosts addressed not those in attendance but those television spectators not yet realized, not at all present. The massive crush for the sake of TV spectacle is best captured by this final photo, which shows Reed the documentarian, camera in hand, striving to capture the essence of a fleeting moment (the Under-16 girls champions); surrounded on all sides by TV crews with much larger cameras, and Sway on the stage in the background waiting idly for his next opportunity to chime in on MTV's behalf. They are all capturing, of course, but some prefer sound bites to experience. This seems to me to be the ethos of branded entertainment.
