The World Cup is about money. Sure, it’s about national pride, silly dances, and sometimes football. But really it’s about money. Money, brands with money, and money people trying to monetize things.
FIFA expects to generate $9 billion from the World Cup this year, while one study estimates that the tournament in general for the three host countries will generate $41 billion in gross domestic product, which is higher than the gross domestic product of the three countries still in production. Competition In the World Cup (don’t think too much about it).
Aside from the obvious gains to each country’s football association ($22m-$63m depending on the stage reached) and players (much smaller than that, despite the prowess of world-class players Pulisix, Messis and Mbappe), who benefits from this financially? Not just through actual finances, but through reputation and other ways you can leverage them. When more than 4.6 million people attend matches in person and an average of more than ten million Americans watch each contest, you have some big opportunities when you join the World Cup – whether you’re a player, sponsor, commentator, influencer, tourism board or gambling venue or site.
Of course, you also have a chance to miss this opportunity, as joining the tournament can be…expensive. So, you better make sure you get some ROI, which is a more important acronym than VAR when it comes to the World Cup.
With the start of the match between the United States and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32 on Wednesday evening Levi San Francisco Bay Area Stadium (Lowest ticket price on Vivid Seats as of Wednesday afternoon: $1,806) Here are the World Cup winners and losers so far.
Winner: Lenovo
You may not have known much about the “Official Technology Partner of the World Cup” before the tournament started. Heck, you probably don’t know much about it now. But the 40-year-old Chinese company, based in North Carolina, has been quietly making inroads into the US market for a while (it makes ThinkPads and Motorola phones). Their presence in the World Cup confirms this.
Its colorful in-broadcast advertising has given it a new status. As previously mentioned “refcam”, and dimensional sneak views (they come from digital twins the company has made of all 1,200 players in the tournament). “Official technology partner” basically means they pay a lot of money for the privilege of putting these weird tech twists into the game.
Perhaps Lenovo’s most notable effort is an AI-focused commercial for David Beckham, in which he builds a lot of things, like a chicken coop, and revs his motorcycle, which is apparently what AI lets you do. Investors love it: The company’s stock price has risen 70 percent since the campaign was first launched in mid-May. Bend it like a buffet?
Winner: David Beckham
Speaking of the man married to Bosch, he has been everywhere on the pitch, and it doesn’t seem like he has been everywhere during this World Cup. The 51-year-old is giving Messi and Mbappe a run for their money as the most ubiquitous faces around. In addition to Lenovo, he flogs Lays, McDonald’s, Bank of America, Stella, Home Depot (“Build It Like Beckham” natch) and Adidas in this five-minute epic with Chalamet, Yamal and others. (One estimate puts his total World Cup money at $25 million.) The dude hasn’t played in 17 years, yet somehow you feel like he just retired. Not an easy trick.
Even while he was touring England’s matches in North America (Boston vs. Ghana and New Jersey vs. Panama), he somehow ended up in the royal box at Wimbledon a few days ago as well. He’d better watch out; I’ve been showing up a lot and had worse than strawberry cream last night.
Winner: Fox Sports
The deal was a steal – maybe the Steal – Modern Sports Broadcasting. This is Cape Verde attracting Spain, and Paraguay defeating Germany. Fox has allocated about $450 million just to broadcast the World Cup – the same amount Netflix pays for just five NFL games. (Except that Fox gets the entire tournament, while Netflix gets just 2% of the NFL season.) And the ratings are excellent so far — averaging 5 million viewers on its platforms (Fox/FS1 and Tubi). Commercials for hated hydration separators Lonely It generates at least a quarter of a billion dollars. Yes, every time a World Cup player scores a goal, Lachlan Murdoch buys another mansion in the Beverly Hillbillies.
Loser: Fox Sports
For strict financial reasons they are doing a fantastic job. But some of the programming calls are… weird to say the least. Ian Darke spends far more time pronouncing names than saying anything of substance. Does anyone watch James Corden’s Freak Show? And who would have thought it was a good idea for Derek Ray to be filming TikTok videos? “It’s great to be here in Mexico City but I have my umbrella ready when I walk around.” Great stuff. Much has been said about the tension between Alexi Lalas and the co-hosts, and it’s there, but it seems like a little bit of friction in the studio is the least of it.
Also, there are certainly better post-match comments than “good game,” and this was the “correct score,” which accounted for about 70 percent of every post-match evaluation. It’s not 1994. It’s a United States of MLS fandom, rabid English Premier League and Champions League watching, and an obsessed nation. Ted Lasso. A little strategy won’t kill you. (Notable exception: Stu Holden, who is and always will be a national treasure.) Fox Sports will undoubtedly win the money game in this WC. But as a showcase for her to prove she can take on giant ESPN or even NBC Sports and Turner? Less convincing.
Winner: Tourism in Cape Verde
You might think this is a joke but it’s not a joke. Interest in visiting Cape Verde has skyrocketed since the team began their happy march to reach the last 32 – and searches from some countries have risen by almost 200 percent. As they should; It’s a cold place. Not sure how football makes you realize that, but cool. This is not the first time this has happened, as Iceland went through a similar boom when it qualified for the European Championship a decade ago. I just hope all the new Cape Verdean enthusiasts understand how little the World Cup has to do with reality. You will win it no He’ll meet you at the airport and invite you back to his house for a cold drink and a bowl of cachoba.
Winner: West Coast Places
Loser: East Coast Stadiums
Hungry for a live sporting event? Do you feel like you have a thousand dollars or two in your wallet just dying to get out? Well, do I have a proposition for you: a World Cup match at an East Coast stadium, where prices routinely exceed $1,000 on resale sites even in low-stakes group stage contests, and are often double what they were on the West Coast (and Midwest/Atlanta) for similar games.
This trend continues in the 32nd round with prices rising. Why Spain-Austria at SoFi ($937) is half the price of Brazil-Norway at MetLife this week ($1,762) is anyone’s guess — perhaps it’s New York tourists and predatory ticket sellers. The group stage matches were often… substandard. Explosions like France and Iraq in Philadelphia, England and Ghana in Foxboro, and Brazil and Scotland in Miami were all a pretty penny for nothing to happen at all. (The knockout round has raised its game so far.)
This is all a win for the vendors and the women who love them, but a loss for the fans and people who live near the venues (and I’m defending the venues themselves, which will now be filled with rich people and idiots, while leaving a bad taste among everyone else who lives nearby who might actually buy tickets the rest of the year).
The worst part might be the experience itself. All that money being doled out to East Coast places will get you there The glamorous confines of MetLife, where concrete is man’s best friend and no on-field action is far enough away. Meanwhile, there’s airy SoFi, cool Levi’s, sexy Lumen and global icon BC Place. (Mexican courts are great too.) The new heat wave underscores this point. Would you like to watch France beat Paraguay in Philadelphia on the afternoon of July 4? You can sit at Lincoln Financial with temperatures up to 97 degrees and humidity up to 60 percent. Or just watch the potential rematch between the USA and Belgium in beautiful Seattle a few days later with a fun game time of 78 degrees. You know which one George Washington would have chosen.
Winner: Ticket reselling platforms
These high prices don’t come out of nowhere – they’re hosted by Vivid, Stubhub, Ticketmaster and FIFA’s ridiculous resale market, where tickets that don’t actually cost $5,000 appear for a second and then disappear faster than Achraf Hakimi’s career. At these prices, the sites make commissions that you will not believe.
Loser: Any fan who has to auction off their firstborn to use it.
winner: Zlatan Ibrahimovic
If there’s a player who can burnish his brand at this year’s World Cup so far it’s… the man who retired three years ago. Zlatan has parodied his larger-than-life image in more viral videos, commercials and on-air battles with Alexi Lalas than I can count. (And here’s one of them grilling second-tier soccer powers for no good reason.) Referring to himself as the man who can do it all and occupy the “Zlatan Republic,” the former Swedish star is basically a walking meme as well as the scorer of the most beautiful goal in the history of international soccer. He has long been a regular on Forbes’ list of the highest-paid off-field athletes in Europe. But thanks to his lovable, narcissistic style, he actually became a fixture in the US as well. I’m not sure yet that he has reached the level of marketing hero on the level of Shaq, but he is starting to gain a foothold, and even American friends like Christian Pulisic are applauding him.
Loser: Cruz and Brooklyn Beckham
I thought the idea of being an unwanted child was that you were trying too hard to impress people with that He loves You. Because, you know, they already hate you. If that’s true then no one sent a note to the two Beckham kids, who are in a fight that’s ridiculous even for people who grew up as children of icons who film, cook and sing just because they can.
First, Brooklyn, who broke up with his family after a social media diatribe about how they tried to sink his marriage to Nicola Peltz, filmed an embarrassing toilet ad for DoorDash in which he gives his tickets to a delivery person instead of going to a game with his family. “It’s not like I don’t have tickets. ‘Well, it’s because…it’s a long story.'” The ad somehow brings up the controversy while also showing fans who can’t afford $1,000 a game that he has tickets that he’s not even using.
Not to be outdone, Cruz Beckham posted a snap of himself with his father at the England-Ghana game in Foxborough last week looking at the phone with the caption “Don’t worry, it was during the commercial break,” in an apparent reference to where his brother was – somehow making himself look even more insignificant than Brooklyn did in the original ad.
I don’t know if either of them are actually trying to do that wins Media battle and the value of Madison Avenue and influencers, but if they are they should be arrested for match fixing.
Loser: SoFI, Lumen, MetLife, NRG, Mercedez-Benz.
Imagine paying half a billion dollars ($600 million in SoFi’s case) to name a venue and then getting no benefit from the most watched event in the world. This goes for all the sponsors who put in so much time to name the stadiums in 16 cities across North America. FIFA doesn’t like non-sponsors getting attention, so they seem to be changing reality more than anyone who hasn’t invoked the Hand of God.
Sure, there’s something weird about seeing Los Angeles Stadium, New York/New Jersey Stadium/Toronto Stadium and other venues devoid of corporate overlays — literally, the signs at Levi’s and Lumen have been frantically and hilariously covered over — but also something weird, like what’s happening in I am a legend When even all the annoying people disappear. Corporate stadium names are how we know sports in 2026, and the fact that we’ve been assaulted by Coke, McDonalds, Adidas and Michelob Ultra everywhere else but then told that a stadium is named after something that can’t be monetized as a city is, well, creepy (even if Levi’s had a little fun covering its logo with the same paper in stores all over the world). Hopefully by the next World Cups in Morocco, Portugal and Spain, FIFA will have figured out not only how to remove sponsor names in stadiums, but replace them with new names for six weeks, and perhaps rename countries while they’re at it too.
Winner: Timothée Chalamet, Steve Carell, Billy Bob Thornton, Flavor Flav and any celebrity lucky enough to be aware and considered useful to a World Cup marketer.
Some of the commercials they end up in — like this five-minute mythology-laden cinematic Adidas ad from TV commercial writer Mark Molloy — are good. Others…less so. Which takes us to…
loser: Which one of us needs to suffer through another spot in a celebrity clown car on behalf of a brand that has a lot of money to spend in service of a questionable idea.
I mean, maybe the greatest players in the world will participate in a little game in the hotel lobby to win a Michelob Ultra or celebrate their win by going to McDonald’s drive-thru like a weary traveler coming off the 405 but if they do, I’d rather not know. There are additional drawbacks to the Beckham-Carell-Thierry Henry place where they go out and meet apparently real people walking out of a supermarket and then invite them to watch a match only if they have Lay’s potato chips in their bag. Never have healthy people shamed someone for not being so unhealthy.
