Brands and advertisers are pouring an estimated $10bn into campaigns and adverts tied to the World Cup, making it one of the most lucrative sporting events in history.
The scale of the opportunity is hard to overstate, with the tournament attracting a global audience that few other events can match, drawing in consumers from virtually every country on earth.
Advertising expert Charlie Rudd described the event as “a massive peak,” telling City AM that “it is always a boon for the industry — it is a global game that every country in the world gets involved in.”
Rudd added that “at the last World Cup 3bn people were watching — so one in three of everybody in the world was watching football,” underscoring just how valuable the platform is for major brands.
However, Fifa has enforced strict rules around stadium branding, forcing venues to cover existing sponsors, with the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium, Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium, and Boston’s Gillette Stadium all losing their identities during the tournament.
Even products in media rooms have not escaped scrutiny, with Heinz items reportedly covered in black tape because the condiment brand is not an official World Cup partner.
Some brands have responded with considerable creativity, with Levi’s covering its iconic batwing logo in a way that still left it clearly recognisable to fans and viewers watching at home.
Gillette similarly covered its branding with a tarp designed to mimic shaving foam, while SoFi took a more minimal approach, using the thinnest covering it could get away with.
Rudd, chief executive of Publicis Groupe UK’s Creative Practice, explained that “one of the things that we talk a lot about in advertising is creating what we call distinctive brand assets, DBAs,” noting these allow brands to remain recognisable even without their name being visible.
He drew a parallel with Guinness’s Six Nations sponsorship, where in France the word “Greatness” appears on the pitch in lettering that closely resembles the word “Guinness” to navigate local alcohol advertising restrictions.
“You could get away with the subliminal work there,” Rudd said, adding that the goal is for consumers to recognise a brand “from 100 paces, even if they can’t quite see it.”
The single biggest advertising story of the tournament has been the introduction of hydration breaks, which American broadcasters such as Fox have seized upon to air commercials worth hundreds of thousands of dollars during the three-minute pauses.
In the UK, ITV has used the breaks to feature tactical analysis from USA women’s manager Emma Hayes, though nothing prevents the broadcaster from selling that airtime to commercial advertisers in future.
Rudd acknowledged the tension between fan experience and commercial opportunity, saying “being a football fan you do go, ‘I can see how irritating they are’,” but that “as an advertiser, you go, ‘What a great opportunity’.”
He noted that cricket has long featured sponsored hydration breaks, typically backed by a water brand, meaning the concept is not entirely new from a commercial perspective, even if football fans are experiencing it for the first time.
World Cup tournaments position themselves at the very centre of global sport every four years, and advertisers continue to capitalise heavily on the unrivalled exposure such an event provides.