the popularity of the kits it produced for competing teams<\/a>. It helps that Spain and Argentina, the two eventual finalists, wore Adidas, too.<\/p>\nBut the German sportswear company was not alone in leaving a commercial mark on the tournament.<\/p>\n
Beckham, prediction-market firm Kalshi, as well as Gillette and Levi\u2019s, all generated noise during the World Cup. The rollouts in Kansas City did not go unnoticed either.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe top story is Adidas versus Nike, and Adidas won that,\u201d says Gareth Balch, CEO and co-founder of Two Circles, a global sports and entertainment marketing company, when asked which brands stood out at the World Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it was just having two teams in the final with Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal. Their ball activation was sensational. In a number of host cities, the ball was central to the authenticity of how that city came to life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ball was absolutely central to how Adidas won that, and they then produced completely amazing creative and had an amazing strapline in \u2018You Got This\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2281289634-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n A giant version of the Adidas ball for the 2026 World Cup, the Trionda, in San Jose, California during the World Cup (Emilee Chinn\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Adidas highlighted that it sold four times as many jerseys and twice as many balls as for the previous men\u2019s World Cup, hosted by Qatar in 2022.<\/p>\n
Its expectation is that event-related sales will surpass $1.7billion, while it also received an Emmy nomination for its Backyard Legends advert in the Outstanding Commercial category.<\/p>\n
It is not just Balch who believes Adidas had a great World Cup either, with Misbah Uraizee, CEO and co-founder of Nectar Social, an AI-driven commerce platform designed for consumer brands, also highlighting its reach.<\/p>\n
After analysing \u201cmore than 2.7million pieces of World Cup content across TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube and X, generating over 64billion impressions\u201d, it found Adidas broke through more than any other brand.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething Adidas did that was interesting is that they were running something of a hybrid model, where they understood that creators, particularly on socials, serve as a really good distribution engine and also a visual hook,\u201d Luke Tillitski, author of the report and a go-to-market strategist at Nectar Social, says.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn social media, people are looking for native content or native creators that they are expecting to see on their feeds, so Adidas realised they could combine creators with all the celebrities and athletes they already have signed on endorsement deals and use creators as the hook.\u201d<\/p>\n
Legendary Mexican goalkeeper designs a kit for The Athletic<\/p>\n
Jack Lang<\/p>\n
As well as Adidas, many feel that Beckham, who is also an Adidas athlete and starred in its World Cup campaign video, elevated his personal brand to a new level due to the number of commercials he appeared in.<\/p>\n
The 51-year-old former England captain partnered with more than 11 companies, including long-term partners Adidas and Pepsi, Bank of America, Lay\u2019s (Walkers in the UK), Home Depot, McDonald\u2019s, Ninja Kitchen and Stella Artois.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the ultimate moment for him,\u201d Balch says of Beckham\u2019s endorsements and visibility. \u201cYou can see why a brand executive sat in a room 12 months ago and said, \u2018Right, how are we going to participate in the World Cup?\u2019, and the level of access, instant recognition and level of intrigue you get whenever David Beckham is in anything is enormous.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was brilliant. People will joke about how frequently used he was, but I thought he did it fantastically, and he\u2019s building a new playbook that many others will follow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Balch also highlighted Kansas City, one of the 16 host cities for this World Cup across Canada, Mexico and the United States, as one of the biggest winners for boosting tourism.<\/p>\n
According to Bank of America, Kansas City recorded the largest increase in consumer spending of any U.S. host city during the group stage and round-of-32 matches, while more than 400,000 people attended its fan festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cKansas City was the smallest host city by any normal metrics for population,\u201d Balch says, \u201cand it was in the top few metrics for all relevant social engagement. They also punched their way to become the sporting capital of the U.S., which is what they want to become known for.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got Austin and Nashville, for example, that are known for different cultural benefits, and Kansas City\u2019s doing that. It really elevated itself in that way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has a vibrancy of avid fans and it really brought that to life, and all the brands that were participating around that did doubly well.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Uraizee, one of the ways a brand can measure its success is whether it was able to \u201cdrive the conversation\u201d, irrespective of whether it was an official FIFA partner, a World Cup licensee or simply looking to get involved in the biggest sporting event on Earth.<\/p>\n
One brand that perhaps did this better than most was Levi\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Even though Levi\u2019s has held naming rights to the San Francisco 49ers NFL team\u2019s home stadium in Santa Clara, California, for more than a decade, FIFA required it and all World Cup venues to cover up any pre-existing branding<\/a> to \u201cprotect its brands and the exclusive rights of its sponsors\u201d.<\/p>\nSo, for the duration of this World Cup, it was known as San Francisco Stadium (despite being almost 50 miles south of that city) rather than Levi\u2019s Stadium.<\/p>\n
The clothing brand poked fun at the notion of having to cover its logos around the stadium using white tarpaulins and then adjusted its avatar on social media platforms to mirror what it had done in real life for the tournament, as well as uploading a video of its work that received more than 2.5million likes on Instagram.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason you saw Levi\u2019s winning and driving so much virality and so much conversation about them is that they made a moment that gave people something to talk about,\u201d Uraizee says. \u201cThat is the biggest thing. How do you manufacture virality? How do you drive algorithms?\u201d<\/p>\n
From a return on investment (ROI) standpoint, Uraizee highlights Kalshi, the prediction-market company that waited until the tournament had started before agreeing to co-brand with ADI Predictstreet, as the likely winners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey played it smart. They waited to see if it was going to be a high ROI,\u201d Uraizee adds. \u201cFor the latter half of the tournament, they amplified themselves significantly and showed a well-executed strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were not spending on a David Beckham sponsorship, plus an official sponsorship, before the tournament even started, and still had a high level of amplification.\u201d<\/p>\n
Uraizee highlights TikTok as the social-media platform with \u201cunlimited reach potential\u201d and, in information shared by FIFA (it partnered with TikTok for the tournament), there were 1.2trillion views on World Cup-related content globally.<\/p>\n
There were also 28billion views and 1.7bn likes on the \u2018@fifaworldcup\u2019 profile during the tournament, which gained 57m followers since the turn of the year.<\/p>\n
With the Women\u2019s World Cup in Brazil taking place next June and July, followed by the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028, companies are already thinking about how they can drive the conversation at those events.<\/p>\n
The men\u2019s World Cup showed that brands do not need to spend millions of dollars on becoming an official partner to garner attention. It could prove to be an interesting trend as other major sporting competitions loom large.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whether it was David Beckham appearing on what seemed like every other TV advert, an all-Adidas final, or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21254],"tags":[21290,172,173,174,710,3748],"class_list":["post-70858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-adidas","tag-adidas","tag-fifa-mens-world-cup","tag-international-football","tag-premier-league","tag-soccer","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70858","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=70858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}