Pakistan, ranked 194th in FIFA ranking, won’t be at Qatar when FIFA World Cup 2022 begins on Sunday, however Pakistan-made footballs will be at the world’s most prestigious sporting event.
Pakistan is one of the suppliers of the official match ball “Al Rihla” for Qatar World Cup.
Forward Sports, a Sialkot-based company, is one of two manufacturers — the other one is from China – that have provided FIFA with at least 300,000 units of the match ball for this event.
The company was one of Sialkot’s leading export earners in 2021–2022 with sales of almost $51 million (Rs9.7 billion in rupee terms given the lower exchange rate at the time). During the course of the year, the nation as a whole exported sporting products worth Rs65.2 billion, according to data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
Pakistan is one of the suppliers of the official match ball “Al Rihla” for Qatar World Cup.
According to Forward Sports, it has produced about one-third of the total amount of the ball known as Al Rihla, which is Arabic for “the journey” and was unveiled in March by German sportswear company Adidas as the official World Cup ball.
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This is not the first time the sports goods manufacturer has supplied footballs for a World Cup. Masood said this was the third successive contract after the company also landed deals for the 2014 and 2018 events.
“There is a match ball — used by players during the international game. But there is another — the more economical balls that are sold in the open market. We have a 35 percent share in match balls (for 2022), but a substantially higher proportion of the open-market product at around 70 percent.” Hassan Masood, director at Forward Sports, was quoted as saying in Business Recorder.
Masood said overall 300,000 match balls have been provided to FIFA by both manufacturers for the event.
Declining to share earnings figures, Masood said the World Cup football contract is expected to bring about Rs6 billion or $27 million for the company.
Masood said he remains ecstatic that the company’s product will feature at an event that, in 2018, was followed by around 3.5 billion viewers, according to FIFA. The number projected for 2022 is expected at 5 billion people around the world, said FIFA President Gianni Infantino back in May.
