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Episode 179
The World Cup Just Redefined Sports Advertising
FIFA's 2026 World Cup pulled in more than $9 billion in tournament revenue. A single rule change around new hydration breaks is expected to net Fox at least $250 million in ad revenue alone.
This week, Elena, Angela, and Rob break down what the World Cup's record-breaking business means for marketers investing in live sports. They dig into whether mega events can crowd out regular advertisers, if sponsorships or TV spots make the smarter sports buy, and how brands of any size can get into the game without overspending. Plus, hear creative tips for keeping viewers engaged when 71% of fans admit their attention is split during the game.
Topics Covered
• [00:00] The record-breaking business of the 2026 World Cup
• [03:00] Why the "Americanization" backlash didn't dent demand
• [08:00] How mega events affect TV pricing for other advertisers
• [10:00] Why live sports still build a brand's memory structures
• [14:00] Making creative work for second-screen viewers
• [15:00] Sponsorships vs. TV spots: which buy works best
Resources:
2026 SportsPro Article
2026 WARC Article: FIFA World Cup
2026 WARC Article: World Cup Engagement
Today's Hosts
Elena Jasper
CMO
Rob DeMars
Chief Misfit
Angela Voss
Chief Executive Officer
Transcript
Elena: I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-hosts, Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the chief misfit at Misfits & Machines.
Angela: Hello.
Elena: We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions in data, research, and what drives business results.
And today we're talking about the FIFA World Cup, which was the biggest, most commercialized World Cup in history. But really, that's just the start of a larger conversation we're gonna have about live sports, why they're so valuable in advertising, and how brands should think about them, especially as we enter football season once again, thank goodness.
Then I'm gonna kick us off, as I always do, with some research, and today I had two articles that I wanted to cover. The first is from SportsPro, and it's titled "Breaking Down the Business of the 13 Billion 2026 FIFA World Cup." This is by Josh Sim. It talks about how the 2026 tournament was the biggest ever.
It was across three countries, 48 teams, 104 matches, and FIFA managed it directly rather than through a local organizing committee, so they controlled media, sponsorships, ticketing. They also introduced dynamic ticket pricing for the first time at a World Cup, and some matches cost more than 10 times more than in Qatar in 2022.
FIFA even took a 15% cut from both sides of every resale. Broadcast rights in the US alone rose 94% from 2022. Media rights revenue was estimated around 3.8 billion, sponsorship around 2.4 billion, and FIFA targeted 13 billion for the full cycle. And broadcasters could now cut to ads during new hydration breaks, which is essentially new, fresh commercial inventory.
Now the second article is from WARC. It's titled "Almost Nine in 10 Fans Plan to Engage With World Cup Games Across Channels" by Celeste Huang. This one is about fan behavior.
86% of UK consumers plan to engage with the tournament across channels, and 9 in 10 said they'd keep watching even if their team got knocked out. But 71% admitted their attention would be split during matches, messaging friends, checking stats, scrolling, or shopping. Nearly 1 in 5 plan to browse or buy online during live games.
And the advertising works. 3 in 10 fans said promotions make them more likely to choose a brand during the World Cup, with purchase intention up 18%.
So heading into this tournament, the worry was that FIFA had gone too far. Expensive tickets, ads in everything, water breaks that conveniently double as commercial breaks.
Critics called it the Americanization of soccer, and yet the revenue blew past their forecasts. They had over nine billion in tournament revenue. A record 63 million Americans watched the final, and knockout round ad spots sold for up to a million dollars, more than double 2018. And Fox is expected to make at least 250 million from hydration breaks alone, proving that those fears didn't really dent the demand.
Okay, so lots to unpack. The lead-up to the World Cup was sort of not super positive. There was ticket backlash. People were calling it too commercial, too American, and it seemed to work out anyway pretty well for FIFA. So what does that tell us about the current demand for live sports in general?
Angela: Yeah.
Did you guys watch the World Cup?
Elena: I watched some of it.
Angela: Okay. Rob?
Rob: What do goat farming and live sports have in common?
Elena: You don't do them.
Rob: They're two things I know nothing about. So that's my answer.
Angela: Do you have a plethora of experience in other types of farming, Rob?
Rob: Absolutely.
Angela: Just not goats.
Rob: Just not goats.
Angela: Okay. Yeah, I feel, uh, ill-advised to speak on the World Cup, aside from viewership and things like that, which we'll do, but I did not watch any of the World Cup, and I feel like I am a very small percent of the population.
Rorke would say less than 10%, right? But geez, I mean, 63 million Americans watching. This was one of the biggest non-NFL audiences in the country in almost 30 years. And then on top of that, TikTok reported 465 million World Cup streams, so it seems the demand is strong enough to warrant the level of attention it received.
Rob: So this is an observation, not a political statement, but it was interesting that Americanization seemed like that was, like, a negative thing, and at the same time, it made a lot of money. So...
Angela: I know. Can that be a good thing?
Rob: Just an observation. I'm not, you know, as an American...
Angela: That stood out to me too, Rob.
Rob: Yeah. But hey, you know what? I think live entertainment in general is a special category and one that as marketers we have to continue to pay attention to. This one happens to be sports. But you also look at things that, like, Netflix has done with the roast of Tom Brady and the idea of making it a shared experience that people can do together.
We're craving that in this world where everything is so asynchronous, right? Like, hey, a little synchronicity can feel good. And I think where Netflix is even doing one better than the live sports is no one really watches it later again, right? When it's entertainment, hell, I watched Taylor Swift's concert.
Sorry, I did. You can laugh at me. But I watched a live concert three months after it happened, and that's an amazing thing that live entertainment can offer, is both the shared experience and the continuity of further viewing down the road that people still wanna do.
Elena: I think it's good news for TV advertisers that this got Americanized a bit. It sounds like there was a lot of inventory that we could've been putting some ads behind, so I think it's great. And not bad for that sport too, which isn't as large in the United States. So I think I agree with you. I didn't really love that characterization either, but it worked out, it seems like.
So as we just mentioned, there was a lot of pushback on, you know, these hydration breaks are ad breaks now, and they had sponsor creative kind of picture-in-picture during matches, and some people felt like this was too much. Rob, do you think that there's a line where advertising does start to damage the fan experience? And then do you think they crossed it, or did they maybe not go far enough, or did they balance it well with the World Cup?
Rob: I'm gonna have to just go with what was spoken about it 'cause I didn't actually watch it, but I'm going to assume that they did an excellent job in being mindful of how can you both have a live experience and offer advertising within it that doesn't interrupt the content. That's always been the magic, and we've kind of forgotten that in advertising.
When you look at when we used to have the big three networks, they would plan those shows, the storylines around commercial breaks, right? So it fit within the content. We don't get that anymore with YouTube, right? It's all just an insert ad here at any moment that they feel like they want to insert it in.
Well, that's not a great viewing experience. So when live sports can take a page from classic storytelling and go, "Wow, how can we weave this in?" People don't hate ads. They hate having what they're enjoying interrupted in a way that feels like an interruption. So I applaud them for making that effort.
Elena: Yeah, I agree. I also think as someone who did watch some games, I felt like there was no advertising. Because we're used to watching football, like that's the live sport I watch the most of. It felt like there's nothing. So I think they almost could probably do more, to be honest.
Rob: How much of a football game are they actually playing football? 'Cause there's plenty of ad inventory baked into that game.
Elena: Right? I mean, I think in the NFL, I think they literally have breaks for, like, commercials. They plan out the games to allow the commercials to run, which FIFA was definitely not doing. Like, I think too, it's a water break, like, who cares? I don't know. Like, I don't really need to watch them drink water.
But I think even giving them water breaks was kind of another controversial thing, apparently, which that seems smart to give you a water break, I think. But all right.
Well, let's talk about the WARC research. They have talked about how these mega events can crowd out regular advertisers.
So it's like, oh, it's super exciting. You could be buying in these big games, but there are sometimes TV pricing spikes. I've seen this commentary come up before. Ange, have we found this to be true? Is that a concern for our advertising, or do you feel like this is not something that most brands need to worry about, events like this impacting their broader kind of offline media investments like TV?
Angela: Yeah. I think it's a good thing to think about, what's your strategy around mega events, you know? And most of our brands aren't bidding against Nike for these big games or live sporting events. They're buying broad reach across networks and day parts that a tournament or a big game isn't pulling from, and that can even help the pricing on that inventory while other marketers might chase those events.
I think where brands get hurt, I don't know that there's a case to be made for being crowded out. I mean, of course, you've got brands that have mega budgets, and some of the brands out there just can't play in that space. But I think the bigger area to get hurt is by conceding to just a FOMO, you know, fear of missing out, and only purchasing that big game.
What you pay per thousand viewers, that CPM is really the biggest lever you have in television, and getting that number down does more for the return than almost any other optimization or tweak that you could make in the campaign. And a giant event is, it's really hard to stay disciplined about what you need from a pricing standpoint.
So I think just before a brand writes the check for something like that, just be honest about, you know, are we reaching people here that we couldn't have reached at a third the cost or less? Or is this kind of a story to tell our friends and our boss?
Elena: Right. Kind of that balance of when it's worth it. And if you're, for some brands, I mean, they might be only advertising on TV during something like the World Cup, 'cause if you do buy one of those, some of those airings are so expensive, and that feels like a miss, if you're trading that for broader reach.
Let's zoom out and talk about live sports in general, because like I said, football season's here. Marketers always get really excited about being a part of the live sports element of traditional TV, and live sports are a really great way to reach huge audiences at once. Like Rob said, people that are having like a shared experience at the same moment.
So Ange, why do you think live sports have held their value within TV in particular so well, and do you see that continuing for years to come, or do you think there's gonna be some sort of shift there?
Angela: Yeah. I mean, this is kind of the one place that's left where that mass reach just exists and you don't have to assemble it yourself. You know, we talk constantly on the show about mental availability and TV builds the memory structures that make a brand easy to recall when someone enters a buying situation months or potentially even years later.
And sports does that at scale like nothing else. 96 of the 100 most watched telecasts last year were sports. And so you think about incrementality in audience, and that's really the game. The point that I don't hear people make is that sports is the least targetable thing that you can buy, and that's kind of a benefit to it.
Everything about the last 10 years has pushed brands into more narrow and narrowing audiences, and Ehrenberg-Bass keeps telling us growth comes from light buyers and non-buyers, and a World Cup event has the potential to hand you that incremental audience that doesn't come to television often.
It's not guaranteed, but it has the potential to be broad, where you can't over-target your way out of it and kinda hurt your brand. You know, will it last? I think the audience will last. People love sports, back to Rob's point. But I think getting to that audience is gonna be harder and harder, and it's probably gonna cost more.
Netflix already has the World Cup for women's in both 2027 and 2031, and the next men's tournament is anticipated to sell for a billion and a half, maybe two billion. So the warning, I think, is sports holding its value doesn't mean it's a good value. If you're paying double, triple, or more what you'd pay to reach the same number of people in regular television, that's a big chunk of change to pay.
Elena: I was thinking the same thing, especially as the rights move around and these different platforms receive the games and their pricing changes. Probably good to take another look at the pricing of some of that stuff, 'cause it's probably gonna be very, very different.
So one thing I wanna talk about was creative strategy around live sports, because if you're a brand and you're gonna invest in something like this, it's probably gonna be very expensive, and you probably wanna make sure your creative is ready to go.
And 71% of fans watching the World Cup said their attention was actually split during matches. They were texting, checking stats, even shopping. So Rob, as a creative, how would you recommend a brand makes an ad work when the audience is second screening this much?
Rob: I love this question because we think it's novel to live sports. For some reason, it's live sports that people are distracted when they're watching television. And this is a phenomenon we all have to deal with now on all forms of programming, which is television commercials have to compete like never before for people's attention.
And so how do we take a look at that ad format and reimagine it? We're still making, and I'm guilty of this, of creating TV commercials like we think people are just captivated by the screen on the wall. And that subtlety is actually a creative expression to be able to just have a wink of a logo or the dusting of a voiceover versus we are competing against everything that's shouting at our audiences in their living rooms.
So it's a great time to get creative and go, "Okay, well, how do we make our distinctive assets celebrated in that environment? How are we utilizing audio?" 'Cause at least we can capture people's ears. What's our sonic logo? And then how are we using the screen when we do get their attention?
Are we really leveraging our distinctive assets? And I'm not saying, like, it has to be screaming like it's an obnoxious billboard, but how do you use that challenge so that you recognize, "I have to pull this person back in the screen." So there's just — that's a creative exercise.
How do you do it, and how do you do it well?
Elena: That's a good point that that stat is actually just all TV. So that's just good advice if you're making a TV commercial at all. Well...
We love TV, so I know we talk a lot about it, but I wanted to also talk about other types of live sports sponsorships, because if a brand wants to get into sports, they could buy a sponsorship like having their logo in a stadium.
They could be the official FIFA partner, or they could buy media time in the form of a TV commercial. So Ange, how do you think a brand should make that decision? If they wanna be a part of it and they're trying to decide like which type of advertising works the best for me, how would you recommend they think about that?
Angela: I think, you know, the reality is they do completely different jobs, and I think a lot of brands buy the wrong one because one of them is maybe more fun to approve. You know, sponsorship buys you association, and airtime buys you a message you can control at a frequency you can control and something that's a heck of a lot easier to measure.
And there's research that points to this in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science that puts roughly 127 seconds of logo exposure as the equivalent of one 30-second spot.
Elena: Whoa.
Angela: It's kinda crazy, right?
Elena: That's a lot. I'd be so curious what the average actually is, 'cause I bet it's less than... I don't know.
Angela: I would think so. I mean...
Elena: Depending on where it is. If it's on the field, maybe you're fine, but that's...
Angela: And how much attention are you actually giving to that?
It's just hard to measure. So when someone hands you a sponsorship package, think about it in those terms. You could price it at equivalent seconds and see how you feel about it, you know. But I think a couple of things to think about when you're trying to make a decision like that is first, do you need to say something or do you just need to show up?
Because if no one knows who you are yet, you need to say something, and a logo can't really say anything. Second, I would say, do you have money left over after a sponsorship to actually do something with activations, or are we just buying the sponsorship? And then third, and I think a lot of people skip this, can you tell whether it worked?
With a TV ad, we can run it in some cities and not in others. There's a lot of ways, from a measurement perspective, to try to tie out performance. But with a sponsorship, you know, "we were in the stadium" isn't a result.
Elena: That's a super interesting stat. I like the idea of using that even as a comparison if you're trying to decide on a sponsorship like that.
So speaking of pricing, live sports keep getting more expensive. I'm curious, Ange, do we feel like, you know, small, mid-sized brands, how could they still be a part of live sports?
Like how could they buy it smartly? Or do you think this is something that they should wait on, or how could they maybe still participate?
Angela: Yeah. I think if you've got an audience fit, which a lot of people do because the audience for sports is pretty broad, you absolutely can. We just have to stop buying a moment and start just buying the audience. And starting somewhere that I think is a little counterintuitive to some brands, which is to stop being obsessed with a low CPM being bad for your brand.
Digital taught everybody that cheap inventory is cheap for a reason, and that lesson doesn't travel into television in the same way it does in digital. So in television, our goal is efficient reach. A lower CPM around sports is a really smart way to think about it. So practically, think about things like buying the season, not just the final.
Regional sports networks, mid-tier matchups that there are fewer brands fighting over, pre- and post-game, you know, are all ways. Same sports viewer, a fraction of the cost, you get frequency instead of one impression. And programmatic and CTV lowered the door there too. You don't need a seven-figure commitment to test into this anymore.
So there are definite ways to lean into sports without having to drop a million dollars on one spot.
Elena: Yeah, lots of options if brands wanna be a part of it.
So let's talk about predictions, which is always fun. So there's things changing with live sports all the time. TikTok's a FIFA partner. Netflix, like you mentioned, Ange, they're gonna be monetizing the games on the women's side. So let's think five years from now, do we think advertising in live sports is gonna look sorta the same, or do we think it's gonna be drastically different than it is now?
Angela: I think same is the demand. I think that sports have been popular for a long time. I don't think that's gonna go away. But the plumbing's gonna be different. The fragmentation — Netflix has the World Cup, the next men's cycle pulls in ESPN, YouTube, Amazon, Fox, bids being projected at billions of dollars.
So buying the World Cup, quote unquote, is gonna mean buying four or five platforms and stitching the reach back together yourself, which is sort of unfortunate. But the thing that is really cool about what happened this year that I'd watch is that inventory creation that got invented. A rule change about player hydration created a quarter of a billion dollars in ad revenue out of nothing.
I need a business idea like that. We're just gonna create revenue out of thin air. So that's exciting.
Rob: It is exciting, and I can just see how great invention can occur through even technology like AI, where you saw, I don't know, five, 10 years ago how they reimagined how graphics showed up on the screen, so they sort of blurred reality a little bit, you know? And like all of a sudden the end zone would transform into something or whatever, right?
Like they're getting inventive. But you can see that going to the next level with AI, where you actually aren't sure what is real and what is not real when it comes to ad units. A Coca-Cola logo that's spray painted on a field that gets dirty, it looks organic. It looks like part of the game, right?
You can do that now with AI, and you can have it dynamically change, or you could have it change by region. You could do all kinds of exciting things. You could have the voiceovers of the live announcers change their sponsorships using things like ElevenLabs, right? I mean, there's all kinds of new ways to potentially meet customers where they're at without pissing them off and going... You know, nobody wants to be lied to, but hey, we're in the business of trying to get brands in front of people and do it in a way they enjoy and in the way that they like.
And if we can alter the parts that aren't the game and get those ad messages in there, it could be really cool.
Angela: It is a good point, Rob. It'll be interesting, like one of the powers, right, of these events is that, A, they do tend to pull in more incremental audience. You know, we just gotta price it right. We've made that point. But it is a mass event, and so everyone is kinda seeing it, hearing it at the same time.
There's signaling that happens there. But with the growth of AI and the ability to pick that apart and potentially do more personalization and things like that, you're kinda losing that then, and we're going into the digital ecosystem. So, uh, it'll be interesting.
Elena: I think that they've done a good job, and I agree with you. I think it's only gonna get better, like the way they've integrated more advertising into just NFL games, like the in-game advertising, and I don't mind any of that. I kinda find it, maybe it's just 'cause I'm in advertising, but I kinda like watching the ads during live sports.
I feel like they're, like, increasingly high quality and they have them integrated into new ways.
So yeah, I think it's only gonna get better probably. To wrap us up here, what is one live event that you'd pay peak dynamic pricing to attend? And for Rob's sake, I clarified this doesn't have to be sports.
So we'll have more options, yes. Ange, if you wanna get us started.
Angela: Yeah. Um, I have to be really honest. This was a super hard question for me 'cause I have joy of missing out. I have almost no FOMO in my life, and I could not come up with a single sporting or concert event that I need to see that bad. Just being honest, like...
Elena: Yeah.
Angela: If I had to pay for seats to my daughter's wedding, to the birth of a grandchild, like those are the events where I'm just gonna be an open pocketbook probably. But I don't know. I mean, I'm good. I'm good.
Rob: I don't know what the deal is with me, but I'm the opposite right now. Maybe it's 'cause we're empty nesters now, but we do, you know, season tickets to the theater in Minneapolis. We got a great theater community there, and we just discovered, here in Minnesota, the Mystic Lake Amphitheater in Shakopee.
Yes, that's a real place. But the idea, especially in Minnesota, of having an outdoor venue that can still seat 20,000 people, when you talk about a shared experience, I actually don't care who's playing. We saw... My family wanted to see the Goo Goo Dolls last week. I didn't even know they still had careers, but I was excited to go to the event because they've got food trucks and the vibe and the sound, so I'm all in on paying a premium to be able to go hang out outside in the summer and eat nachos.
Elena: How were the Goo Goo Dolls, Rob? 'Cause how old are they now?
Rob: Yeah, they're terrific. But I mean, they had a career when I was young. They were a thing, and the lead singer was just still fit as a fiddle. The guy's like 60 and up there just doing his thing, and they were great. And we saw Bob Dylan there three weeks before that, and 85 years old, and he sounded great. So I don't know. How about you, Elena?
Elena: Yeah, I'm probably more on Ang's side. I had trouble with this because I don't love to go places in general usually. But, um, I was trying to think of... Like, my first thought was Packers Super Bowl, and then I thought I'd rather watch that on my couch 'cause it's hard to see sometimes at the games.
Like, I'd rather have a sports experience actually at home. So a wedding or, like, a family event, Ange, is such a — I can't believe I didn't think of that. That's such a good one. I thought of the Minnesota State Fair, and I'm not saying I'd pay, like, an exorbitant amount of money, but I'd pay their most expensive ticket. I love going to the state...
Rob: The great Minnesota sweat together.
Angela: Ah.
Elena: We are, like, one of the top state fairs in the United States, if anyone didn't know that. Yeah. Come to Minnesota.
Angela: Yep.
Elena: To the state fair.
Angela: I think it's a signal of strength, you know, that we don't have to go to these events to fill some void in our life or something like Rob does. No, I'm kidding. I actually agree with you. I do think it could be a stage of life thing. I can see...
Rob: Yeah. I think it's like you just sort of go, "Wow, we got nothing to do."
Angela: Yep. No, totally. When you're in the throes of raising children and stuff, you're being plucked out of your home. You know, you'd rather be shackled to the basement, and then you get to a different stage of life and you're like, "Well, let's wander a little bit." So I'm happy for you.
Elena: All right.
Episode 179
The World Cup Just Redefined Sports Advertising
FIFA's 2026 World Cup pulled in more than $9 billion in tournament revenue. A single rule change around new hydration breaks is expected to net Fox at least $250 million in ad revenue alone.
This week, Elena, Angela, and Rob break down what the World Cup's record-breaking business means for marketers investing in live sports. They dig into whether mega events can crowd out regular advertisers, if sponsorships or TV spots make the smarter sports buy, and how brands of any size can get into the game without overspending. Plus, hear creative tips for keeping viewers engaged when 71% of fans admit their attention is split during the game.
Topics Covered
• [00:00] The record-breaking business of the 2026 World Cup
• [03:00] Why the "Americanization" backlash didn't dent demand
• [08:00] How mega events affect TV pricing for other advertisers
• [10:00] Why live sports still build a brand's memory structures
• [14:00] Making creative work for second-screen viewers
• [15:00] Sponsorships vs. TV spots: which buy works best
Resources:
2026 SportsPro Article
2026 WARC Article: FIFA World Cup
2026 WARC Article: World Cup Engagement
Today's Hosts
Elena Jasper
CMO
Rob DeMars
Chief Misfit
Angela Voss
Chief Executive Officer
Subscribe on
Enjoy this episode? Leave us a review.
Transcript
Elena: I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-hosts, Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the chief misfit at Misfits & Machines.
Angela: Hello.
Elena: We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions in data, research, and what drives business results.
And today we're talking about the FIFA World Cup, which was the biggest, most commercialized World Cup in history. But really, that's just the start of a larger conversation we're gonna have about live sports, why they're so valuable in advertising, and how brands should think about them, especially as we enter football season once again, thank goodness.
Then I'm gonna kick us off, as I always do, with some research, and today I had two articles that I wanted to cover. The first is from SportsPro, and it's titled "Breaking Down the Business of the 13 Billion 2026 FIFA World Cup." This is by Josh Sim. It talks about how the 2026 tournament was the biggest ever.
It was across three countries, 48 teams, 104 matches, and FIFA managed it directly rather than through a local organizing committee, so they controlled media, sponsorships, ticketing. They also introduced dynamic ticket pricing for the first time at a World Cup, and some matches cost more than 10 times more than in Qatar in 2022.
FIFA even took a 15% cut from both sides of every resale. Broadcast rights in the US alone rose 94% from 2022. Media rights revenue was estimated around 3.8 billion, sponsorship around 2.4 billion, and FIFA targeted 13 billion for the full cycle. And broadcasters could now cut to ads during new hydration breaks, which is essentially new, fresh commercial inventory.
Now the second article is from WARC. It's titled "Almost Nine in 10 Fans Plan to Engage With World Cup Games Across Channels" by Celeste Huang. This one is about fan behavior.
86% of UK consumers plan to engage with the tournament across channels, and 9 in 10 said they'd keep watching even if their team got knocked out. But 71% admitted their attention would be split during matches, messaging friends, checking stats, scrolling, or shopping. Nearly 1 in 5 plan to browse or buy online during live games.
And the advertising works. 3 in 10 fans said promotions make them more likely to choose a brand during the World Cup, with purchase intention up 18%.
So heading into this tournament, the worry was that FIFA had gone too far. Expensive tickets, ads in everything, water breaks that conveniently double as commercial breaks.
Critics called it the Americanization of soccer, and yet the revenue blew past their forecasts. They had over nine billion in tournament revenue. A record 63 million Americans watched the final, and knockout round ad spots sold for up to a million dollars, more than double 2018. And Fox is expected to make at least 250 million from hydration breaks alone, proving that those fears didn't really dent the demand.
Okay, so lots to unpack. The lead-up to the World Cup was sort of not super positive. There was ticket backlash. People were calling it too commercial, too American, and it seemed to work out anyway pretty well for FIFA. So what does that tell us about the current demand for live sports in general?
Angela: Yeah.
Did you guys watch the World Cup?
Elena: I watched some of it.
Angela: Okay. Rob?
Rob: What do goat farming and live sports have in common?
Elena: You don't do them.
Rob: They're two things I know nothing about. So that's my answer.
Angela: Do you have a plethora of experience in other types of farming, Rob?
Rob: Absolutely.
Angela: Just not goats.
Rob: Just not goats.
Angela: Okay. Yeah, I feel, uh, ill-advised to speak on the World Cup, aside from viewership and things like that, which we'll do, but I did not watch any of the World Cup, and I feel like I am a very small percent of the population.
Rorke would say less than 10%, right? But geez, I mean, 63 million Americans watching. This was one of the biggest non-NFL audiences in the country in almost 30 years. And then on top of that, TikTok reported 465 million World Cup streams, so it seems the demand is strong enough to warrant the level of attention it received.
Rob: So this is an observation, not a political statement, but it was interesting that Americanization seemed like that was, like, a negative thing, and at the same time, it made a lot of money. So...
Angela: I know. Can that be a good thing?
Rob: Just an observation. I'm not, you know, as an American...
Angela: That stood out to me too, Rob.
Rob: Yeah. But hey, you know what? I think live entertainment in general is a special category and one that as marketers we have to continue to pay attention to. This one happens to be sports. But you also look at things that, like, Netflix has done with the roast of Tom Brady and the idea of making it a shared experience that people can do together.
We're craving that in this world where everything is so asynchronous, right? Like, hey, a little synchronicity can feel good. And I think where Netflix is even doing one better than the live sports is no one really watches it later again, right? When it's entertainment, hell, I watched Taylor Swift's concert.
Sorry, I did. You can laugh at me. But I watched a live concert three months after it happened, and that's an amazing thing that live entertainment can offer, is both the shared experience and the continuity of further viewing down the road that people still wanna do.
Elena: I think it's good news for TV advertisers that this got Americanized a bit. It sounds like there was a lot of inventory that we could've been putting some ads behind, so I think it's great. And not bad for that sport too, which isn't as large in the United States. So I think I agree with you. I didn't really love that characterization either, but it worked out, it seems like.
So as we just mentioned, there was a lot of pushback on, you know, these hydration breaks are ad breaks now, and they had sponsor creative kind of picture-in-picture during matches, and some people felt like this was too much. Rob, do you think that there's a line where advertising does start to damage the fan experience? And then do you think they crossed it, or did they maybe not go far enough, or did they balance it well with the World Cup?
Rob: I'm gonna have to just go with what was spoken about it 'cause I didn't actually watch it, but I'm going to assume that they did an excellent job in being mindful of how can you both have a live experience and offer advertising within it that doesn't interrupt the content. That's always been the magic, and we've kind of forgotten that in advertising.
When you look at when we used to have the big three networks, they would plan those shows, the storylines around commercial breaks, right? So it fit within the content. We don't get that anymore with YouTube, right? It's all just an insert ad here at any moment that they feel like they want to insert it in.
Well, that's not a great viewing experience. So when live sports can take a page from classic storytelling and go, "Wow, how can we weave this in?" People don't hate ads. They hate having what they're enjoying interrupted in a way that feels like an interruption. So I applaud them for making that effort.
Elena: Yeah, I agree. I also think as someone who did watch some games, I felt like there was no advertising. Because we're used to watching football, like that's the live sport I watch the most of. It felt like there's nothing. So I think they almost could probably do more, to be honest.
Rob: How much of a football game are they actually playing football? 'Cause there's plenty of ad inventory baked into that game.
Elena: Right? I mean, I think in the NFL, I think they literally have breaks for, like, commercials. They plan out the games to allow the commercials to run, which FIFA was definitely not doing. Like, I think too, it's a water break, like, who cares? I don't know. Like, I don't really need to watch them drink water.
But I think even giving them water breaks was kind of another controversial thing, apparently, which that seems smart to give you a water break, I think. But all right.
Well, let's talk about the WARC research. They have talked about how these mega events can crowd out regular advertisers.
So it's like, oh, it's super exciting. You could be buying in these big games, but there are sometimes TV pricing spikes. I've seen this commentary come up before. Ange, have we found this to be true? Is that a concern for our advertising, or do you feel like this is not something that most brands need to worry about, events like this impacting their broader kind of offline media investments like TV?
Angela: Yeah. I think it's a good thing to think about, what's your strategy around mega events, you know? And most of our brands aren't bidding against Nike for these big games or live sporting events. They're buying broad reach across networks and day parts that a tournament or a big game isn't pulling from, and that can even help the pricing on that inventory while other marketers might chase those events.
I think where brands get hurt, I don't know that there's a case to be made for being crowded out. I mean, of course, you've got brands that have mega budgets, and some of the brands out there just can't play in that space. But I think the bigger area to get hurt is by conceding to just a FOMO, you know, fear of missing out, and only purchasing that big game.
What you pay per thousand viewers, that CPM is really the biggest lever you have in television, and getting that number down does more for the return than almost any other optimization or tweak that you could make in the campaign. And a giant event is, it's really hard to stay disciplined about what you need from a pricing standpoint.
So I think just before a brand writes the check for something like that, just be honest about, you know, are we reaching people here that we couldn't have reached at a third the cost or less? Or is this kind of a story to tell our friends and our boss?
Elena: Right. Kind of that balance of when it's worth it. And if you're, for some brands, I mean, they might be only advertising on TV during something like the World Cup, 'cause if you do buy one of those, some of those airings are so expensive, and that feels like a miss, if you're trading that for broader reach.
Let's zoom out and talk about live sports in general, because like I said, football season's here. Marketers always get really excited about being a part of the live sports element of traditional TV, and live sports are a really great way to reach huge audiences at once. Like Rob said, people that are having like a shared experience at the same moment.
So Ange, why do you think live sports have held their value within TV in particular so well, and do you see that continuing for years to come, or do you think there's gonna be some sort of shift there?
Angela: Yeah. I mean, this is kind of the one place that's left where that mass reach just exists and you don't have to assemble it yourself. You know, we talk constantly on the show about mental availability and TV builds the memory structures that make a brand easy to recall when someone enters a buying situation months or potentially even years later.
And sports does that at scale like nothing else. 96 of the 100 most watched telecasts last year were sports. And so you think about incrementality in audience, and that's really the game. The point that I don't hear people make is that sports is the least targetable thing that you can buy, and that's kind of a benefit to it.
Everything about the last 10 years has pushed brands into more narrow and narrowing audiences, and Ehrenberg-Bass keeps telling us growth comes from light buyers and non-buyers, and a World Cup event has the potential to hand you that incremental audience that doesn't come to television often.
It's not guaranteed, but it has the potential to be broad, where you can't over-target your way out of it and kinda hurt your brand. You know, will it last? I think the audience will last. People love sports, back to Rob's point. But I think getting to that audience is gonna be harder and harder, and it's probably gonna cost more.
Netflix already has the World Cup for women's in both 2027 and 2031, and the next men's tournament is anticipated to sell for a billion and a half, maybe two billion. So the warning, I think, is sports holding its value doesn't mean it's a good value. If you're paying double, triple, or more what you'd pay to reach the same number of people in regular television, that's a big chunk of change to pay.
Elena: I was thinking the same thing, especially as the rights move around and these different platforms receive the games and their pricing changes. Probably good to take another look at the pricing of some of that stuff, 'cause it's probably gonna be very, very different.
So one thing I wanna talk about was creative strategy around live sports, because if you're a brand and you're gonna invest in something like this, it's probably gonna be very expensive, and you probably wanna make sure your creative is ready to go.
And 71% of fans watching the World Cup said their attention was actually split during matches. They were texting, checking stats, even shopping. So Rob, as a creative, how would you recommend a brand makes an ad work when the audience is second screening this much?
Rob: I love this question because we think it's novel to live sports. For some reason, it's live sports that people are distracted when they're watching television. And this is a phenomenon we all have to deal with now on all forms of programming, which is television commercials have to compete like never before for people's attention.
And so how do we take a look at that ad format and reimagine it? We're still making, and I'm guilty of this, of creating TV commercials like we think people are just captivated by the screen on the wall. And that subtlety is actually a creative expression to be able to just have a wink of a logo or the dusting of a voiceover versus we are competing against everything that's shouting at our audiences in their living rooms.
So it's a great time to get creative and go, "Okay, well, how do we make our distinctive assets celebrated in that environment? How are we utilizing audio?" 'Cause at least we can capture people's ears. What's our sonic logo? And then how are we using the screen when we do get their attention?
Are we really leveraging our distinctive assets? And I'm not saying, like, it has to be screaming like it's an obnoxious billboard, but how do you use that challenge so that you recognize, "I have to pull this person back in the screen." So there's just — that's a creative exercise.
How do you do it, and how do you do it well?
Elena: That's a good point that that stat is actually just all TV. So that's just good advice if you're making a TV commercial at all. Well...
We love TV, so I know we talk a lot about it, but I wanted to also talk about other types of live sports sponsorships, because if a brand wants to get into sports, they could buy a sponsorship like having their logo in a stadium.
They could be the official FIFA partner, or they could buy media time in the form of a TV commercial. So Ange, how do you think a brand should make that decision? If they wanna be a part of it and they're trying to decide like which type of advertising works the best for me, how would you recommend they think about that?
Angela: I think, you know, the reality is they do completely different jobs, and I think a lot of brands buy the wrong one because one of them is maybe more fun to approve. You know, sponsorship buys you association, and airtime buys you a message you can control at a frequency you can control and something that's a heck of a lot easier to measure.
And there's research that points to this in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science that puts roughly 127 seconds of logo exposure as the equivalent of one 30-second spot.
Elena: Whoa.
Angela: It's kinda crazy, right?
Elena: That's a lot. I'd be so curious what the average actually is, 'cause I bet it's less than... I don't know.
Angela: I would think so. I mean...
Elena: Depending on where it is. If it's on the field, maybe you're fine, but that's...
Angela: And how much attention are you actually giving to that?
It's just hard to measure. So when someone hands you a sponsorship package, think about it in those terms. You could price it at equivalent seconds and see how you feel about it, you know. But I think a couple of things to think about when you're trying to make a decision like that is first, do you need to say something or do you just need to show up?
Because if no one knows who you are yet, you need to say something, and a logo can't really say anything. Second, I would say, do you have money left over after a sponsorship to actually do something with activations, or are we just buying the sponsorship? And then third, and I think a lot of people skip this, can you tell whether it worked?
With a TV ad, we can run it in some cities and not in others. There's a lot of ways, from a measurement perspective, to try to tie out performance. But with a sponsorship, you know, "we were in the stadium" isn't a result.
Elena: That's a super interesting stat. I like the idea of using that even as a comparison if you're trying to decide on a sponsorship like that.
So speaking of pricing, live sports keep getting more expensive. I'm curious, Ange, do we feel like, you know, small, mid-sized brands, how could they still be a part of live sports?
Like how could they buy it smartly? Or do you think this is something that they should wait on, or how could they maybe still participate?
Angela: Yeah. I think if you've got an audience fit, which a lot of people do because the audience for sports is pretty broad, you absolutely can. We just have to stop buying a moment and start just buying the audience. And starting somewhere that I think is a little counterintuitive to some brands, which is to stop being obsessed with a low CPM being bad for your brand.
Digital taught everybody that cheap inventory is cheap for a reason, and that lesson doesn't travel into television in the same way it does in digital. So in television, our goal is efficient reach. A lower CPM around sports is a really smart way to think about it. So practically, think about things like buying the season, not just the final.
Regional sports networks, mid-tier matchups that there are fewer brands fighting over, pre- and post-game, you know, are all ways. Same sports viewer, a fraction of the cost, you get frequency instead of one impression. And programmatic and CTV lowered the door there too. You don't need a seven-figure commitment to test into this anymore.
So there are definite ways to lean into sports without having to drop a million dollars on one spot.
Elena: Yeah, lots of options if brands wanna be a part of it.
So let's talk about predictions, which is always fun. So there's things changing with live sports all the time. TikTok's a FIFA partner. Netflix, like you mentioned, Ange, they're gonna be monetizing the games on the women's side. So let's think five years from now, do we think advertising in live sports is gonna look sorta the same, or do we think it's gonna be drastically different than it is now?
Angela: I think same is the demand. I think that sports have been popular for a long time. I don't think that's gonna go away. But the plumbing's gonna be different. The fragmentation — Netflix has the World Cup, the next men's cycle pulls in ESPN, YouTube, Amazon, Fox, bids being projected at billions of dollars.
So buying the World Cup, quote unquote, is gonna mean buying four or five platforms and stitching the reach back together yourself, which is sort of unfortunate. But the thing that is really cool about what happened this year that I'd watch is that inventory creation that got invented. A rule change about player hydration created a quarter of a billion dollars in ad revenue out of nothing.
I need a business idea like that. We're just gonna create revenue out of thin air. So that's exciting.
Rob: It is exciting, and I can just see how great invention can occur through even technology like AI, where you saw, I don't know, five, 10 years ago how they reimagined how graphics showed up on the screen, so they sort of blurred reality a little bit, you know? And like all of a sudden the end zone would transform into something or whatever, right?
Like they're getting inventive. But you can see that going to the next level with AI, where you actually aren't sure what is real and what is not real when it comes to ad units. A Coca-Cola logo that's spray painted on a field that gets dirty, it looks organic. It looks like part of the game, right?
You can do that now with AI, and you can have it dynamically change, or you could have it change by region. You could do all kinds of exciting things. You could have the voiceovers of the live announcers change their sponsorships using things like ElevenLabs, right? I mean, there's all kinds of new ways to potentially meet customers where they're at without pissing them off and going... You know, nobody wants to be lied to, but hey, we're in the business of trying to get brands in front of people and do it in a way they enjoy and in the way that they like.
And if we can alter the parts that aren't the game and get those ad messages in there, it could be really cool.
Angela: It is a good point, Rob. It'll be interesting, like one of the powers, right, of these events is that, A, they do tend to pull in more incremental audience. You know, we just gotta price it right. We've made that point. But it is a mass event, and so everyone is kinda seeing it, hearing it at the same time.
There's signaling that happens there. But with the growth of AI and the ability to pick that apart and potentially do more personalization and things like that, you're kinda losing that then, and we're going into the digital ecosystem. So, uh, it'll be interesting.
Elena: I think that they've done a good job, and I agree with you. I think it's only gonna get better, like the way they've integrated more advertising into just NFL games, like the in-game advertising, and I don't mind any of that. I kinda find it, maybe it's just 'cause I'm in advertising, but I kinda like watching the ads during live sports.
I feel like they're, like, increasingly high quality and they have them integrated into new ways.
So yeah, I think it's only gonna get better probably. To wrap us up here, what is one live event that you'd pay peak dynamic pricing to attend? And for Rob's sake, I clarified this doesn't have to be sports.
So we'll have more options, yes. Ange, if you wanna get us started.
Angela: Yeah. Um, I have to be really honest. This was a super hard question for me 'cause I have joy of missing out. I have almost no FOMO in my life, and I could not come up with a single sporting or concert event that I need to see that bad. Just being honest, like...
Elena: Yeah.
Angela: If I had to pay for seats to my daughter's wedding, to the birth of a grandchild, like those are the events where I'm just gonna be an open pocketbook probably. But I don't know. I mean, I'm good. I'm good.
Rob: I don't know what the deal is with me, but I'm the opposite right now. Maybe it's 'cause we're empty nesters now, but we do, you know, season tickets to the theater in Minneapolis. We got a great theater community there, and we just discovered, here in Minnesota, the Mystic Lake Amphitheater in Shakopee.
Yes, that's a real place. But the idea, especially in Minnesota, of having an outdoor venue that can still seat 20,000 people, when you talk about a shared experience, I actually don't care who's playing. We saw... My family wanted to see the Goo Goo Dolls last week. I didn't even know they still had careers, but I was excited to go to the event because they've got food trucks and the vibe and the sound, so I'm all in on paying a premium to be able to go hang out outside in the summer and eat nachos.
Elena: How were the Goo Goo Dolls, Rob? 'Cause how old are they now?
Rob: Yeah, they're terrific. But I mean, they had a career when I was young. They were a thing, and the lead singer was just still fit as a fiddle. The guy's like 60 and up there just doing his thing, and they were great. And we saw Bob Dylan there three weeks before that, and 85 years old, and he sounded great. So I don't know. How about you, Elena?
Elena: Yeah, I'm probably more on Ang's side. I had trouble with this because I don't love to go places in general usually. But, um, I was trying to think of... Like, my first thought was Packers Super Bowl, and then I thought I'd rather watch that on my couch 'cause it's hard to see sometimes at the games.
Like, I'd rather have a sports experience actually at home. So a wedding or, like, a family event, Ange, is such a — I can't believe I didn't think of that. That's such a good one. I thought of the Minnesota State Fair, and I'm not saying I'd pay, like, an exorbitant amount of money, but I'd pay their most expensive ticket. I love going to the state...
Rob: The great Minnesota sweat together.
Angela: Ah.
Elena: We are, like, one of the top state fairs in the United States, if anyone didn't know that. Yeah. Come to Minnesota.
Angela: Yep.
Elena: To the state fair.
Angela: I think it's a signal of strength, you know, that we don't have to go to these events to fill some void in our life or something like Rob does. No, I'm kidding. I actually agree with you. I do think it could be a stage of life thing. I can see...
Rob: Yeah. I think it's like you just sort of go, "Wow, we got nothing to do."
Angela: Yep. No, totally. When you're in the throes of raising children and stuff, you're being plucked out of your home. You know, you'd rather be shackled to the basement, and then you get to a different stage of life and you're like, "Well, let's wander a little bit." So I'm happy for you.
Elena: All right.