It's been a controversial World Cup. Courtesy of Getty The champions of the 2026 World Cup will be decided when favorites Spain and never-say-die defending champs Argentina meet for the final at New York New Jersey Stadium on Sunday. But off the pitch, online in the vibe-o-sphere, the true winners and losers of this tournament have already been decided.
The world’s biggest sporting event — sorry Olympics — isn’t just about the team lifting the trophy, it’s about who captured the media narrative. It’s about who got richer, who got roasted, and who accidentally became the internet’s main character for six weeks. A Belgian YouTuber outdrew MrBeast. A centuries-dead raiding culture got the best rebrand since Nordic noir. And a feel-good run by a bunch of plucky American underdogs curdled into a geopolitical incident faster than you can say “overturned red card.”
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Winner: Sponsors
Image Credit: Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images Whoever hoists the Cup on Sunday, World Cup advertisers will be coming away champions. Before a single ball was kicked, this tournament was a record breaker in terms of corporate sponsorship, with world soccer governing body FIFA booking around $2.8 billion in revenue, up from around $1.8 billion in Qatar 2022.
FIFA’s controversial decision to expand the tournament from 32 to 48 teams delivered advertisers exactly what they were promised: more matches, more fans, more eyeballs and, crucially, many more opportunities to sell things. Stadiums have been virtually full throughout, broadcast audiences have broken records across the host nations of United States, Canada, and Mexico and social media engagement has topped tens of billions of video views.
This World Cup also expanded the range of tournament sponsors. Alongside drinks (Coca-Cola), fast food (McDonalds), sneakers (Adidas), cars (Hyundai) and credit cards (Visa), we saw the arrival of banking (Bank of America), telecoms (Verizon), and state-run oil firms (Saudi’s Aramco) to the World Cup VIP lounge. Diehards may grumble, but the cash registers have spoken. FIFA President Gianni Infantino is already taking about expanding the tournament further, to 64 teams for the 2030 event.
