The World Cup: 2026

At the time of writing, there are just 4  teams left in the FIFA World Cup, and it’s obvious how this is, by any measure, the single largest communal experience in the world. 

In a post-social world, it’s impossible that billions of viewers share the same moment, at the same time - whether it's heartbreak, elation, or just awe at Lionel Messi doing it all over again. The game transcends local and international geopolitics, language barriers and other cultural divides. Cities become living, breathing organisms like they’re supposed to. Look at all the wonderful celebratory videos coming out of Boston, Miami, Toronto, Dallas and even Times Square in NYC. 

All of which makes what most World Cup sponsors have done with this moment, extremely puzzling - they’ve just chosen not to be a part of the moment. 

A Community Moment, But Community Involvement was absent

Darwin by Maha Global, along with Onclusive, studied how (and indeed, if) major FIFA sponsors were tapping into this profoundly human moment of togetherness; i.e. if they were talking to their community, and in turn the community resonated with them.

The headline finding was striking. Most of the media coverage of the World Cup sponsors focused purely on the numerical value (85%, to be very precise). Community initiatives, advocacy work, volunteering - the actual human impact, during a very collective humanity moment - seemed to be an afterthought for how sponsors communicated their World Cup association. 

What’s more, of the 18 sponsors we studied, exactly half showed ZERO measurable philanthropic activity. For the billions watching, this must go down as a missed opportunity. And while our data shows there’s a narrow gap between the brand’s perception within its community, and the actual behavior, just four brands do the heavy lifting to keep this gap narrow. (Click below know which these are).

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Sponsors: Good intentions, Narrow Outcomes 

Look at some of the brand names - Visa, Adidas, PepsiCo, American Express, Airbnb, to name a few: Thousands in the stadium and billions at home probably recognize these brands instantly. So why are they at a sporting event spending millions more to get their logo in front of an audience? 

There are real programmes with a lot of investment on the ground, for girls in sport, and other underserved community groups. And there’s genuine care in seeing these programmes come through, scale up and succeed. 

But the story didn’t travel to either the community at large, or to the media. And in the context of a World Cup, or any large sporting event, that is a missed opportunity. Brand reputations are affected, and find themselves being a bit of a force-fit into people’s lives.

Some host cities have given this tournament a few stories that will live forever. Boston running out of beer due to the Tartan Army, and becoming a Scottish outpost. Los Angeles spreading fan zones across an entire county because no single space worked by itself. And Mexico City's Zócalo, transformed into what FIFA itself called the Greatest Temple of Football.

These aren’t run-of-the-mill cities and communities; they’ve got a proud history, and proud people. And sponsors have not been able to weave themselves into the fabric of these communities. 

If not community, at a World Cup, then what?

First, let’s rule out the obvious. For a brand seeking ‘brand lift’, the World Cup is not the right vehicle. The biggest sponsors in the world don’t need the global audience, or a local community, to know who they are. They need to be seen as corporations that care, and show that they understand how central the game is to the lives of their communities. 

Community trust at this scale comes from a story that people in these communities recognise as true, and actually see it in motion. This cannot come from merely writing a cheque; and for a sporting event, landing its core message with its core communities is likely to

You had the world's attention, and you had something real to say. What happened between those two things?

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The data in this piece is drawn from Sponsor Intelligence: World Cup 2026 Edition, a research collaboration between Onclusive and Darwin by MAHA Global. To get the report, click here

This is Part one of two. Part two of this series looks at what a small number of brands got right — and what it means for the next major sponsorship moment.