The World Cup is about money. Sure, it’s about national pride and ridiculous dances and sometimes even soccer. But really it’s about money. Money and monied brands and money people who are trying to monetize things.
FIFA projects it will generate $9 billion from this World Cup year, while one study estimates the tournament overall for the three host countries will generate $41 billion in GDP, which is higher than the GDP of three countries still competing in the World Cup (don’t think too hard about that one).
Beyond the obvious haul of each country’s soccer federation ($22 million-$63 million depending on stage reached) and the players (a lot smaller than that despite the artistry of the Pulisics and Messis and Mbappes of the world), who is benefitting from this financially? Not just with literal finances, but in reputation and other ways you can cash in. When more than 4.6 million people attend games in person and when an average of more than ten million people are watching each game in the U.S. alone, you have some big opportunities when you affiliate with the World Cup — whether you’re a player, sponsor, commentator, influencer, tourist board, venue or gambling site.
Of course, you also have the opportunity to flub that opportunity, as being affiliated with the tournament can be…pricey. So you better ensure you’re getting some ROI, which when it comes to the World Cup is an even more important acronym than VAR.
With the U.S.-Bosnia Herzegovina Round of 32 game set for Wednesday evening from Levi’s San Francisco Bay Area Stadium (lowest ticket price on Vivid Seats as Wednesday afternoon: $1,806), here are the business winners and losers of the World Cup so far.
Winner: Lenovo
You probably didn’t know much about the “official technology partner of the World Cup” before the tournament started. Heck, you may not know much about it now. But the 40-year-old Chinese company with a beachhead in North Carolina has been quietly making inroads in the American market for a while (they make ThinkPads and Motorola phones). Their presence at the World Cup underscores this.
Its flashy in-broadcasting advertising inside venues has given it a new stature; ditto “refcam,” and those dimensional offside presentations (they come from digital twins the company made of all 1200 players in the tournament). The “official technology partner” basically means they pay a lot of money for the privilege to put these ovel tech twists in the game.
Maybe the most high profile of Lenovo’s efforts is a David Beckham AI-centric commercial, in which he builds a lot of stuff, like a chicken coop, and revs his motorcycle, which apparently AI lets you do. Investors love it: the company’s stock price has risen 70 percent since the campaign debuted in mid-May. Bend it like Buffet?
Winner: David Beckham
Speaking of the guy who’s married to Posh, he was everywhere on the pitch, bit nothing like he’s been everywhere at 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’s flogging Lays, McDonald’s, Bank of America, Stella, Home Depot (“Built It Like Beckham,” natch) and Adidas in that five-minute epic with Chalamet, Yamal et al. One estimate put his total World Cup haul at $25 million. Dude hasn’t played in 17 years and yet somehow you feel like he just retired. Not an easy trick.
Even as he’s been making the rounds at England’s matches in North America (Boston vs Ghana and New Jersey vs Panama), somehow he ended up back in the Royal Box at Wimbledon a few days ago too. Hope he can afford the second strawberries ’n cream.
Winner: Fox Sports
The deal was a steal — maybe the steal — of modern sports broadcasting. This is Cape Verde drawing Spain, Paraguay taking down Germany kind of stuff. Fox laid down just about $450 million to broadcast this World Cup — basically the same as Netflix is paying for just five NFL games. (Except Fox gets the whole tournament and Netflix just gets 2% of the NFL season.) The ratings are stellar — an average of 5 million viewers on its platforms (Fox/FS1 and Tubi). The commercials from those hated hydration breaks alone are generating at least a quarter of a billion dollars. Every time a World Cup player scores, Lachlan Murdoch buys another Beverly Hillbillies mansion.
Loser: Fox Sports
On strict monetary grounds they’re doing great. But some of the programming calls are… odd to say the least. Ian Darke spends a lot more time pronouncing names than saying anything of substance. Is anyone watching that weird James Corden show? And who thought it was a good idea to have Derek Rae shoot TikTok videos? “Great to be here in Mexico City but I’ve got my umbrella ready for when I go walk about.” Fascinating stuff. A lot has been made about the tension between Alexi Lalas and his co-hosts but a little studio friction seems like the least of it.
Also, surely there are better postgame commentaries than “a good match,” this was the right result,” which is about 70 percent of every postgame assessment. This isn’t 1994. it’s the U.S. of massively popular MLS, rabid viewership of the EPL and Champion’s League and a nation obsessed with Ted Lasso. A little strategy wouldn’t kill you. (Exception: Stu Holden, who was and remains a national treasure). Fox Sports will undoubtedly win the money game this WC. But as a showcase in its bid to prove it can take down behemoth ESPN or even NBC Sports and Turner? Less convincing.
Winner: Cape Verde Tourism
You’d think this is a joke but it is not a joke. Interest in visiting Cape Verde has skyrocketed since the team went on its draw-happy run to make the Round of 32 —searches from some countries are up nearly 200 percent. As they should; it’s a chill place. Not sure how soccer makes you realize that, but cool. Nor is this the first time it’s happened — Iceland went through a similar boom when they had their run in the Euros a decade ago. I just hope all the newly converted Cape Verde enthusiasts understand how little the World Cup has to do with reality. Vozinha will not be meeting you at the airport to invite you back to his house for a cold one and bowl of cachupa.
Winner: West Coast Venues
Loser: East Coast Venues
Are you feeling a hunger for a live sporting event? Are you feeling like you have a thousand bucks or two in your wallet itching to get out? Well, have I got a proposition for you: A World Cup match at an east coast stadium, where prices have routinely topped $1000 on resale sites for even low-stakes group stage contests, often double what they were on the west coast (and the midwest/Atlanta) for comparable games.
The trend continues into the Round of 32 as prices jump up. Why Spain-Austria at SoFi ($937) is half the price of Brazil-Norway at MetLife this week ($1762) is anyone’s guess — NY tourists and predatory ticket resellers, probably. And the games from the group stage more often than not been…subpar. Blowouts like France-Iraq in Philly, England-Ghana in Foxborough and Brazil-Scotland in Miami were all a pretty penny to see nothing much happen at all. (The knockout round has at least upped its game.)
This is all a win for resellers and the women who love them, but it’s a loss for fans and the people who live near the venues (and, I’d argue for the venues themselves, which will now be filled with the rich and sucker-y, while leaving a bad taste among everyone else who lives near them and might actually buy tickets the rest of the year).
The worst part is the experience. All that money doled out to East Coast venues gets you into the charming confines of MetLife, where concrete is a man’s best friend and no on-field action is far enough. Meanwhile, there’s airy Sofi, pleasant Levi’s, thrilling Lumen and international icon BC Place. (The Mexico stadiums are pretty dope too.) A new heat wave only underscores the point. Want to watch France beat up on Paraguay at in Philly on July 4 afternoon? You can sit in Lincoln Financial with a high of 97 degrees and 60 percent humidity. Or just watch a potential U.S.-Belgium rematch in beautiful Seattle a few days later with a pleasant 78 degree match time. You know which one George Washington would have chosen.
Winner: Ticket Re-sale platforms
Those high prices don’t come out of nowhere – they are hosted by Vivid, Stubhub, Ticketmaster and that ridiculous FIFA ‘re-sale market, in which tickets that don’t actually cost $5,000 appear for a second and then are gone faster than an Achraf Hakimi run. With these prices the sites are making commissions like you wouldn’t believe.
Loser: Any fan forced to auction off their firstborn to use one.
Winner: Zlatan Ibrahimovi?
If there’s a player to really burnish his brand at this year’s World Cup so far it’s…a guy who retired three years ago. Zlatan has poked fun at his larger-than-life image in more viral videos and commercials and on-air fights with Alexi Lalas than I can count. (Here’s one of him roasting the second-tier soccer powers for no good reason.) Referring to himself as the man who can do everything and occupying the “Republic of Zlatan,” the Swedish former great is basically a walking meme and also has the prettiest goal in international-soccer history. And he’s long been a regular on the Forbes list of most highly-paid athletes off the field in Europe. But with his lovable narcissist shtick he’s actually becoming a fixture in the U.S. too. Not sure he’s at Shaq-level marketing hero yet, but he’s gaining a foothold and even U.S. pals like Christian Pulisic are applauding.
Loser: Cruz and Brooklyn Beckham
I thought the idea of being a nepo baby is you try hard to get people to like you. Because, you know, they already hate you. If that’s true no one sent a memo to two of the Beckham boys, who are in a ridiculous fight even for people who grew up the children of icons and do photography, cooking and singing just because they can.
First Brooklyn, estranged from his family after a social-media diatribe about how they’re trying to submarine his marriage to Nicola Peltz, shot a cringe WC ad for DoorDash in which he gives away his tickets to a deliveryperson instead of going to a match with his family. “It’s not like I don’t have tickets. “Um, it’s because … it’s a long story.” The ad somehow simultaneously reminds of the feud while also flexing to fans who can’t afford the $1k/match admission that he has tickets he doesn’t even use.
Not to be outdone, Cruz Beckham posted a shot of himself with his dad at the England-Ghana match in Foxborough last week of him looking at the phone with a caption “Don’t worry it was during the advertisement break,” an obvious reference to his brother’s spot — somehow making himself seem even more petty than Brooklyn did in the original ad.
I don’t know if either of them are actually trying to win the battle of the media and up their Madison Avenue and influencer value, 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 none of the benefit of the world’s most-watch event. So it goes for all the sponsors who paid big time to name stadiums in the 16 cities across North America. FIFA doesn’t like when non-sponsors get attention so apparently they’re changing reality more than whoever didn’t call the Hand of God.
Sure, there’s something quaint about seeing Los Angeles Stadium, NY/NJ Stadium/Toronto stadium and other venues bereft of corporate overlays, but also something eerie, like what happens in I Am Legend when even all the annoying people are gone. Corporate stadium names is how we know it’s sports in 2026, and the fact that we’re assaulted with Coke, McDonalds, Adidas and Michelob Ultra everywhere else but then told a stadium is named after something as non-monetizable as a city, well it’s creepy, and I hope by the next World Cup in Morocco-Portugal-Spain, FIFA has figured out not only how to take down sponsors but replace them with new ones for the six weeks, and maybe rename the countries while they’re at it too.
Winner: Timothee Chalamet, Steve Carrell, Billy Bob Thornton, Flavor Flav and any celebrity lucky enough to be sentient and deemed useful to a World Cup marketer.
Some of the commercials they end up in— like Chalamet’s five-minute mythology-laden cinematic Adidas spot from TV-commercial auteur Mark Molloy are good. Others….less so. Which takes us to…
Loser: Any of us who need to suffer through one more forced celebrity clown-car spot on behalf of a brand with too much money to spend in service of a questionable idea.
I mean, maybe the world’s greatest players get into a pickup game in a hotel lobby to win a Michelob Ultra or celebrate their win by going to the McDonald’s Drive through like an overworked commuter coming off the 405 but if they do, I’d rather not know about it. Extra demerits for the Beckham-Carell-Thierry Henry spot in which they go out and meet apparently real people coming out of a supermarket and then invite them to a watch a game only if they have Lay’s potato chips in their bag. Never have people so healthy shamed someone for not being so unhealthy.