By Alexandra Gomperts, Staff Writer
Twenty years ago, watching the FIFA World Cup meant gathering with your friends and family around the television, cheering for your national team and discussing the match the next day.
Today, fans rarely watch the tournament on a single screen, viewing matches while simultaneously texting in group chats, scrolling TikTok, reacting on X, creating memes, checking fantasy brackets and following players on Instagram in real time.
The World Cup remains the most-watched sporting event in the world, but consumer behavior has fundamentally changed. As Gen Z becomes a larger share of the global consumer market, brands must shift their focus to social media platforms and digital communities. Brands can no longer rely on traditional marketing strategies to gain brand engagement.
For marketers, the World Cup is not just a month-long soccer tournament; it is one of the largest consumer events in the world. The 2022 FIFA World Cup had 5 billion unique individuals engaging with the tournament in some capacity.
Global brands invest billions of dollars in sponsorships because the tournament drives consumption across multiple industries, including apparel, food and beverage, travel, hospitality, streaming and sports betting.
However, consumers today behave differently than they did even a decade ago. Attracting customers is no longer as simple as airing a memorable television commercial. Brands must rethink how to capture the attention of a generation that moves through trends weekly.
“Second-screen behavior” is one of the biggest shifts. Today, fans watch across multiple platforms, engage in online discourse and watch recaps and commentary on social media. Previous generations watched full matches with friends or family and read newspaper recaps the next day.
The fragmentation of consumer attention has completely transformed sports marketing. Brands must compete against millions of pieces of content that are being generated every minute across all social media platforms. It is not enough for brands to simply reach the consumer; they have to engage the audience with their content.
One of the most effective ways brands have adapted to capture attention is through athlete-driven marketing. With the shift towards digital platforms, fans have increasingly formed emotional connections with individual players rather than their national teams. Accordingly, companies have changed their marketing strategies, investing in athletes who act as influencers and content creators. This allows brands to reach consumers in a more personal and authentic way than traditional advertising. For example, Adidas positioned Jude Bellingham, a midfielder who plays for England, as the face of its World Cup campaigns, using his personality and presence to connect with the younger audience. However, this trend extends beyond sportswear, with soccer stars like Erling Haaland of Norway partnering with Samsung and Breitling, and Lamine Yamal of Spain becoming a global ambassador for American Eagle. In today’s sports marketing landscape, brands are looking to sponsor athletes who captivate an audience beyond soccer matches.
Another way the younger generation interacts with the World Cup is through user-generated content. Instead of simply watching the games, fans now create TikTok edits and outfit videos, and post their predictions and reactions online. User-generated content is extremely valuable for brands because it generates authentic, consumer-driven engagement. This type of content creates high levels of trust for the consumer in the brand because it is inherently authentic as opposed to marketing campaigns driven by large corporations.
This shift toward participatory fandom means that Gen Z influencers are not just consumers of the World Cup, but rather co-creators of it. Unilever Global launched a content platform called House of Fresh for its FIFA World Cup campaign. The campaign involved creating video templates, branded audios and interactive filters for fans and influencers to use. The company also built physical pop-ups in Mexico City, Miami and New York City and invited influencers, soccer players and sportscasters. The goal was to blend soccer culture with personal care brands like Dove, Rexona and Axe.
Investing in social media awareness rather than traditional advertising, Unilever designed these immersive pop-ups for digital creators to produce feed-ready content. The campaign prioritized creating a physical environment that made it easy for creators to produce media and post as much as possible. This hands-on campaign proved highly effective and profitable.
Social media-driven marketing for the World Cup proved highly effective in keeping hold of Gen Z’s lightning-quick attention span. While it’s too soon to know exact numbers and return on investment, this success shows how social media and personality-based advertising has true staying power in keeping brands culturally relevant.
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