{"id":67936,"date":"2026-08-06T16:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T16:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/67936\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T16:06:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T16:06:13","slug":"coke-and-visa-score-adidas-and-mcdonalds-fumble-on-pricey-world-cup-sponsorships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/67936\/","title":{"rendered":"Coke and Visa Score, Adidas and McDonald’s Fumble on Pricey World Cup Sponsorships"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that quarterly earnings results are in for many of the brands that spent an estimated $2.8 billion<\/a> to be an official sponsor of the 2026 World Cup, the question for marketers is: Did they get their money\u2019s worth?<\/p>\n

The answer is a mixed bag, depending who you ask.<\/p>\n

The Winners<\/p>\n

The world cup seemed to be a win for Coca-Cola, which saw net revenues go up by 7% in Q2 to $13.4 billion. <\/p>\n

CEO Henrique Gnani Braun told analysts<\/a> on an earnings call that Coca-Cola\u2019s World Cup sponsorship contributed to trademark Coca-Cola volume growth of 5% for the quarter, its strongest in 17 years.<\/p>\n

At Visa, CEO Ryan McInerney and CFO Chris Suh both also praised their FIFA investment on the financial services giant\u2019s earnings call. <\/p>\n

Visa ended its third quarter on July 28, reporting a 14% year-over-year net revenue increase to $11.63 billion. In some host cities, transactions rose 20%, while business from international visitors grew as much as 40%.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we know, the FIFA World Cup brought many visitors to the U.S.,\u201d Suh told analysts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Yellow Cards<\/p>\n

There was less to cheer about at McDonald\u2019s, where Q2 comparable store sales rose just 1.3% overall, while U.S. comps rose an anemic 0.8%. Contrast that to Q2 last year, when those figures were 3.8% and 2.5%, respectively.<\/p>\n

The Golden Arches showered World Cup fans with everything from team collectibles to a World Cup 26 Meal. After the campaign delivered lackluster results, CEO Chris Kempczinski told analysts that the focus is now on delivering consistent quality, not \u201cborrowed equity<\/a>\u201d from high-profile partnerships.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough to break through when you have that many messages out there,\u201d Kempczinski\u00a0 said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a K-Pop Demon Hunters message, then you have a value message, then you have a beverage message, then you have a FIFA message. It\u2019s tough to drive awareness when you\u2019re jumping around.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Adidas\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

In marketing terms, Adidas did more jumping than anyone. It signed stars like Bad Bunny and Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet<\/a> for a six-minute ad, dressed 14 national teams in Adidas attire, and even supplied the official \u201cTrionda\u201d ball<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And while its Q2 numbers looked good at first blush (net sales grew by 14%), its footwear revenue grew by just 1% and its profit fell short of analyst estimates\u2014not good when marketing spending was 30% higher<\/a> than last year.<\/p>\n

Wall Street threw down the yellow card: Adidas\u2019 stock fell 19% on the news.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The plummet surprised CEO Bj\u00f8rn Gulde, who regarded the FIFA partnership as a long-term investment in visibility. \u201cI see the share price and I don\u2019t know what the misunderstanding is,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Penalty Shot<\/p>\n

It\u2019s harder to gauge the postgame vibe over at Verizon and American Airlines, because their earnings calls contained no mentions of FIFA or the World Cup at all.<\/p>\n

Verizon\u2019s revenues from mobility and broadband were up by 2.8%, to $23.4 billion, and CEO Dan Schulman cited<\/a> a \u201ccombination [of] higher quality net adds, better volumes, lower churn, and lower unit cost economics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, while American Airlines\u2019s revenues grew 16.3% year over year to $16.7 billion, chief commercial officer Nat Pieper chalked it up to \u201cexecuting our four-pillar strategy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those pillars included improving customer experience and growing the global network\u2014but not writing a check to FIFA.<\/p>\n

\"McDonald’s<\/a> <\/p>\n

Still yet to report is Nike, which ripped up the script<\/a> on its typical World Cup playbook to create a \u201cuniverse\u201d of content that lives around its hero film. Nike is expected to report earnings in September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now that quarterly earnings results are in for many of the brands that spent an estimated $2.8 billion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21254],"tags":[21290,23067,284],"class_list":["post-67936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-adidas","tag-adidas","tag-brands","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}