IMG, the international sports marketing giant, has secured a contract to lead the sale of media and sponsorship rights for this year’s inaugural FIFA ASEAN Cup national teams soccer tournament.
As well as managing the sale of the tournament’s commercial rights, IMG will oversee broadcast production for the event, which is set to take place across Hong Kong and Indonesia from September 24 to October 5.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
This year’s competition will be staged in Indonesian cities Bandung and Jakarta, as well as Hong Kong, featuring 14 teams – comprising 11 ASEAN (southeast Asian) member nations and three guest sides.
Adolfo Bara, senior vice president and managing director of football at IMG, said: “By creating a dedicated platform for neighboring nations and their leading players to compete, the tournament will unlock new opportunities for the game across Southeast Asia.
“We are excited to work with the tournament and its stakeholders to build a high-quality, commercially sustainable competition that can become a regular fixture on the international football calendar.”
Global soccer governing body FIFA announced the new tournament last October in collaboration with the region’s ASEAN pan-governmental organization to be staged during FIFA’s national team match windows.
FIFA said the tournament would allow participating countries to utilize the international windows to call up overseas talent rather than relying solely on domestic players – as has occurred in recent years.
Questions remain over how the new tournament will affect the existing biennial ASEAN Championship tournament, which occurs in a single block outside of FIFA regulation windows.
Due to being staged outside the international window, clubs are not obliged to release players to national team duty, which has affected national teams who have been unable to call upon high-profile overseas players to participate.
However, earlier last year, the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) governing body agreed to a lucrative title sponsorship deal for the tournament with major South Korean automotive brand Hyundai, a multi-year partnership that only begins in 2026, and covers three other major ASEAN tournaments.
Though Hyundai is a long-term partner of FIFA (since 1999) in a deal running through 2030, it remains that the inclusion of a new ASEAN national team tournament could adversely affect sponsorship and media rights values related to the existing ASEAN Championship, and potentially ASEAN’s relationship with commercial agency Sportfive (which manages the ASEAN Championship).
Other ASEAN competition sponsors include regional insurance conglomerate MSIG, global hotel and hospitality chain Accor, and match ball supplier Adidas.
On the other hand, a new regional tournament could also grant the AFF more broadcast and sponsorship inventory to sell, which could prove beneficial to national teams seeking funding to mount World Cup qualification charges.
In recent years, with the expansion of the FIFA World Cup to 48 teams, ASEAN member federations have been seeking an increase in the number of elite competitive fixtures to improve the quality of national team performance.
The 12-member AFF is made up of Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam, although Australia, by nature of its high FIFA rank relative to other AFF members, does not typically participate in regional AFF competition.
For IMG, the new agreement builds on its partnership with PT Garuda Sepak Bola Indonesia (GSI) on behalf of the Football Association of Indonesia (PSSI), which has seen the agency advise on calendar structure, developing a new commercial media and sponsorship rights strategy, standardizing and enhancing production, and providing audience growth and digital transformation services since 2025.
The new deal also adds to IMG's bulging soccer partnerships stable, with the agency providing a wide range of advisory, commercial, digital, and production services to organizations including South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL), Major League Soccer, Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), Premier League, Saudi Pro League, Football Australia, Australian Professional Leagues (APL), English Football League (EFL), J.League, WSL Football, Arabian Gulf Cup Football Federation, and Confederation Africaine de Football (CAF), among others.
