Kantar: 11 official World Cup sponsors saw almost no rise in awareness

September 5, 2026 · kantar.com

Kantar spent the 39 days of the 2026 FIFA World Cup tracking sponsor performance, creative effectiveness and creator content across the tournament's 11 official partners and sponsors. FIFA had collected roughly $2.7 billion in sponsorship and marketing-rights revenue for the 2023-2026 cycle, and brands spent an estimated $1.4 billion on World Cup-related advertising in the US alone, with nearly 7,000 brands advertising around the event. Despite that spend, Kantar recorded almost no rise in sponsorship awareness over the course of the tournament and found no meaningful gap in creative effectiveness between sponsors and non-sponsors. Coca-Cola, a FIFA partner since the 1970s, ran its Trophy Tour for months before kickoff and carried the idea through advertising, social, retail and experiential activity, helping deliver its strongest volume growth in 17 years outside the post-COVID recovery period. Nike, without official FIFA rights, released the Wieden+Kennedy film "Rip the Script" a week before the June 11 opener and entered the tournament with 75% buzz among 18-34s, the highest Kantar tracked for any brand.

Sponsorship rights buy entry into the conversation. Activation plans, creator selection tied to brand-lift potential, and campaigns built to attach clearly to the brand determine who wins from there. Kantar tested more than 15,000 creator posts and found engagement metrics matched brand-building potential in about a third of cases, and fewer than half of World Cup ads featuring a celebrity delivered strong branding alongside the star: reach and fame need disciplined execution behind them to produce results. David Beckham alone appeared in campaigns for at least 11 brands during the tournament, so the association attached to Beckham himself. The same test applies to Super Bowl LXI, the 2027 FIFA Women's World Cup and LA28, where teams can budget for activation and measurement with the same rigor as the rights fee itself.