Sponsorship & Measurement
The World Cup Sponsorship Scorecard Needs More Than Reach
Post-tournament evidence shows that advertising exposure, sponsor recognition, consumer consideration, customer data, and sales results did not move together during the 2026 World Cup, requiring brands and rights holders to adopt a more disciplined sponsorship-measurement system.
Reach established the opportunity, not the return
The 2026 FIFA World Cup removed any remaining doubt about soccer’s ability to attract a large commercial audience in the United States.
The tournament generated record television audiences, extensive public participation, significant advertising demand, and thousands of brand campaigns. Marketing Dive reported that advertisers spent approximately $1.42 billion on media within match broadcasts during the competition.
That scale established the opportunity. It did not establish the return for every participating brand.
Post-tournament evidence shows that sponsor recognition, advertising awareness, consumer consideration, first-party data, product sales, and long-term customer value did not necessarily move together.
Some official partners translated their rights into measurable business performance. Some brands without official status generated strong consumer response. Other companies produced significant visibility but weaker commercial results than expected.
For brands, rights holders, agencies, and soccer organizations, the lesson is not that sponsorship failed. It is that sponsorship performance cannot be summarized by one large audience number.
The appropriate question is no longer simply, “How many people saw us?” It is, “What changed because we were there?”
Visibility, brand effect, and business effect are different outcomes
Commercial reports often combine broadcast audience, media impressions, logo exposure, social views, activation attendance, sponsor awareness, brand consideration, registrations, customer data, retail activity, sales, and continuing customer relationships into one success narrative.
These measures describe different stages of performance. A broadcast impression establishes potential exposure. Sponsor recognition indicates that a person understood the commercial association. Consideration suggests that the relationship may have influenced preference. Registration creates a possible direct connection. A transaction records behavior. Retention shows that the relationship continued.
Exposure
Broadcast audience, media impressions, logo visibility, and social views establish the opportunity to be noticed.
Participation
Activation attendance, content completion, registrations, and other actions show that people entered the program.
Brand response
Sponsor recognition, message association, favorability, and consideration indicate whether the audience understood and valued the relationship.
Commercial behavior
Retail visits, redemptions, inquiries, transactions, and sales show movement toward a business result.
Owned relationships
Consent-based customer data creates a possible direct relationship, not a finished commercial outcome.
Retention
Repeat activity and continuing customer relationships show whether tournament attention produced durable value.
A brand can produce high awareness without changing purchase consideration. An activation can attract a crowd without acquiring qualified customers. A promotion can generate registrations that never become active relationships. Sales can increase during a tournament without establishing whether sponsorship, advertising, distribution, pricing, or general category demand caused the change.
A useful sponsorship report should maintain these distinctions.
Official status remains valuable, but it does not guarantee performance
YouGov’s post-tournament BrandIndex analysis provides one of the clearest demonstrations.
The company examined more than 2,000 brands among U.S. adults interested in the World Cup. It compared the 39 days before the tournament with the competition period from June 11 through July 19, measuring changes in advertising awareness, brand buzz, and purchase consideration.
Pepsi ranked first among the 16 brands with identifiable World Cup or soccer activity. Its advertising awareness increased 7.5 points, buzz rose 12.2 points, and purchase consideration increased 10.4 points.
Pepsi achieved that result even though Coca-Cola, rather than Pepsi, held FIFA’s official soft-drink partnership. YouGov attributed Pepsi’s performance to a platform built around soccer culture, supporter rituals, players, chants, and emotional participation. The brand created a recognizable role without presenting itself as an official FIFA sponsor.
This does not mean that official rights were unnecessary. Official status provides protected intellectual property, access, inventory, hospitality, activation opportunities, and the ability to make a clear association with the competition.
It does demonstrate that rights and results are separate parts of the investment. A brand can hold extensive rights without using them effectively. Another company can create relevant soccer communication without official status, provided it operates within applicable intellectual-property and ambush-marketing rules.
Rights create permission and opportunity. Strategy and execution determine what happens next.
Sources: YouGov: U.S. World Cup brand winners
Awareness does not always become consideration
YouGov’s U.K. analysis of sponsor-linked brands offers another useful distinction.
Adidas gained 7.7 points in advertising awareness, but its purchase consideration remained flat. Budweiser gained nine points in advertising awareness and 3.6 points in buzz, while consideration declined by 1.1 points.
The findings relate to U.K. adults interested in the World Cup, so they should not be presented as U.S. results. The underlying analytical lesson is still relevant: visibility can increase while purchase intent remains unchanged.
Relevance
The product may not have been relevant to the consumer’s immediate needs, or the message may have been memorable but commercially weak.
Starting point
A brand with high consideration before the tournament may have had limited room to increase it.
Activation design
The experience may have created entertainment without a clear product connection, while competitive activity offset part of the effect.
Conversion conditions
Price, availability, timing, or the intended objective may explain why awareness did not become immediate consideration.
A responsible report should not classify flat consideration automatically as failure. It should determine whether consideration was an intended outcome and whether the campaign created another form of value.
The problem occurs when a visibility result is used to imply a commercial effect that was never measured.
Coca-Cola connected several levels of performance
Coca-Cola provides a more complete example of a sponsorship measurement system.
In its July 28 earnings release, the company reported that its World Cup program engaged more than 80 million consumers through connected packaging and produced more than 25 million first-party data records.
The company also said that the campaign contributed to a portion of 5% quarterly volume growth for Trademark Coca-Cola and 8% growth for Powerade. It did not attribute all of that growth exclusively to the tournament.
Digital participation
The program generated more than nine billion digital and social views.
Venue consumption
Average product incidence exceeded 80% at tournament venues.
Distribution
Activation extended across more than 180 markets and 20 million retail locations.
Localization
The company used zip-code-level execution rather than relying only on one global campaign.
Customer capability
The program produced a continuing first-party data asset that can be evaluated after the tournament.
The important point is not that Coca-Cola reported the largest numbers. Its program connected official rights, product availability, media, local activation, venue consumption, connected packaging, customer information, sales volume, and future marketing capability.
The company could therefore examine performance across exposure, participation, distribution, customer acquisition, and product demand.
Even here, attribution requires discipline. Quarterly volume can be influenced by distribution, weather, pricing, promotions, category trends, and other marketing activity. First-party records also have limited value unless people provided appropriate consent and continue to engage.
The strength of the example is that the program produced several types of evidence rather than one reach total.
Sources: Coca-Cola second-quarter 2026 results · Reuters: Coca-Cola financial results · Marketing Dive: World Cup marketing performance
Large campaigns can still underperform
The tournament also produced a useful caution.
Marketing Dive reported that McDonald’s executives said the company’s World Cup campaign generated a business lift and strong internal excitement, but underperformed expectations. The company attributed approximately one-third of its second-quarter customer-traffic underperformance against its expectations to the campaign.
McDonald’s has been a FIFA partner since 1994. It had official status, extensive distribution, substantial advertising, and a globally recognized consumer brand.
Those advantages did not remove the need for the campaign to perform against a defined commercial objective. The result illustrates why reporting should include the original forecast.
Incrementality
The incremental result may be lower than activation cost, or an offer may attract existing customers without adding visits.
Operations
Complexity can reduce conversion, and performance may differ substantially between markets.
Total investment
Media and sponsorship costs can exceed the value created even when campaign activity increases.
Displacement
Event-period demand may replace ordinary business rather than add to it.
“Generated a lift” and “met the commercial objective” are not the same conclusion. Brands should preserve that distinction, particularly when evaluating renewals.
First-party data is an intermediate result
Customer information has become one of the most frequently cited benefits of sponsorship activation.
A tournament promotion may produce email registrations, mobile-wallet additions, contest entries, app downloads, QR-code interactions, membership sign-ups, hospitality records, or product redemptions.
These can be valuable outcomes, but the number of records should not be treated as the final result.
Consent and source
Was valid consent obtained, and which market and program produced the relationship?
Audience quality
Does the person belong to a priority audience, and what useful value did the participant receive?
Continuing behavior
Did the person engage again or move into a purchase, event, membership, or inquiry?
Economics and retention
What did the record cost to acquire, is the relationship still active, and what information can legally be retained and used?
A registration acquired through a ticket contest may have limited continuing value if the participant wanted only the prize. A smaller group that joins a local program, redeems a relevant benefit, or attends multiple events may be commercially stronger.
Customer acquisition should therefore be measured through cohorts. Tournament-acquired audiences should remain identifiable so that their later behavior can be compared with existing customers, paid-media audiences, retail customers, and other acquisition sources.
The scorecard should contain six layers
A practical soccer-sponsorship scorecard should separate at least six levels of performance.
1. Delivery
Rights delivered, intellectual-property use, media inventory, hospitality, venue access, content, activation days, geographic coverage, reliability, and partner service.
2. Audience and participation
Qualified reach, frequency, activation visits, dwell time, viewing attendance, content completion, repeat participation, market and language distribution, and cost per participant.
3. Recognition and brand response
Correct sponsor recognition, advertising awareness, message association, relevance, favorability, consideration, recommendation, and incremental search activity.
4. Commercial behavior
Product trial, retail visits, redemption, incremental transactions, order value, membership, merchandise, event registration, qualified inquiries, meetings, and pipeline influence.
5. Owned relationships
Consent-based registrations, acquisition cost, profile completeness, second action, active days, retention, preference data, hospitality follow-up, and qualified contacts.
6. Continuing value
Post-event retention, repeat purchasing, continuing programs, renewal, audience migration, partner relationships, reusable content, operating improvements, employee engagement, and market knowledge.
Delivery establishes whether the contractual program was provided. It does not establish whether audiences responded.
Qualified reach is more useful than a global total when a company is pursuing U.S. customers in selected industries or cities. Gross activity should also be separated from incremental activity.
The final layer is particularly important for brands that described the World Cup as the beginning of a longer U.S. soccer strategy.
Sources: MarketCast: proving World Cup sponsorship performance · Nielsen: North American soccer audiences
Baselines determine whether the result is credible
Measurement methodology should be established before campaign results are known.
Time
Compare with the period before the tournament or the same period in the previous year.
Exposure
Use an unexposed control audience or non-activation markets where possible.
Business context
Compare with ordinary category performance, existing customers, and the original forecast.
Alternatives
Compare the result with other acquisition channels or another sponsored property.
Each comparison answers a different question. The tournament period may also include seasonality, changes in distribution, pricing activity, competitive campaigns, broader media coverage, and economic conditions.
No method will remove every outside influence. The report should state the limitations rather than present false precision.
Brands should also separate correlation from attribution. A rise during the World Cup establishes timing. It does not automatically prove that sponsorship caused the entire change.
Rights holders need to participate in measurement
The measurement responsibility does not belong only to sponsors.
Rights holders can improve the commercial value of their partnerships by creating consistent data definitions, research standards, venue reporting, audience access, activation benchmarks, and post-event analysis.
Availability and ownership
Define which audience information exists and whether data belongs to the property, platform, venue, or sponsor.
Counting and benchmarks
Explain how attendance and participation are counted and which comparable results can be shared.
Commercial interpretation
Clarify how recognition is measured and which outcomes require data from the brand.
Governance
Set rules for market comparisons, public claims, privacy, and consent.
Properties should also avoid promising outcomes they cannot control. A rights holder can deliver access, inventory, operational support, audience research, and activation opportunities. It cannot guarantee that a company’s product, offer, creative work, distribution, or customer follow-up will perform.
The most credible evaluation is jointly designed but independently disciplined.
Market-entry programs require different measures
An international club, league, federation, or brand entering the United States may not seek immediate national sales.
Its first commercial objectives may involve identifying priority cities, establishing local credibility, recruiting commercial partners, building supporter relationships, testing language and content preferences, developing retail demand, meeting corporate prospects, supporting local soccer organizations, or creating recurring viewing and event destinations.
A mass-reach scorecard would provide an incomplete view of that work.
A program reaching 5,000 qualified participants in three priority markets may be more valuable than one generating one million undifferentiated impressions. A hospitality program producing ten serious commercial discussions may matter more than a large social audience. A local supporter program that continues through the next season may create more market value than a temporary tournament activation.
Measurement should follow the commercial purpose of the investment.
The renewal decision should determine the original scorecard
The 2026 World Cup created an unusually large and crowded commercial environment. It also produced enough variation to show why one definition of success is inadequate.
Pepsi demonstrated that official status was not required to change consumer consideration. Coca-Cola connected rights and activation with product volume, venue consumption, audience data, and future marketing capability. Other official partners generated awareness without equivalent movement in consideration. McDonald’s reported positive activity but acknowledged that its campaign did not meet expectations.
These were not contradictions. They were different commercial results.
Before renewing, expanding, or entering another soccer partnership, an organization should determine:
Purpose
What business problem was the partnership intended to address, and which audiences and markets mattered?
Inputs
Which rights were essential, and which activation created the response?
Evidence
What changed against an appropriate baseline, and what did the organization retain?
Continuation
Which results can continue without tournament attention, and did total value justify total cost?
The World Cup proved that soccer can deliver reach in the United States.
The stronger commercial question is whether an organization can identify what happened between that reach and its business.
Sources: The Current: advertising investment and brand response · Reuters: Bank of America Fan Band activation
SGN VIEW
The World Cup proved that soccer can deliver reach in the United States. The stronger commercial question is whether an organization can identify what happened between that reach and its business.
