Part two of two. Part one — on why most World Cup sponsors missed the moment — is available here.

The reign is Spain's. The men's soccer team showed that a collective that works hard together, can overcome star power and deservedly won the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

We now turn our attention back to the sporting event itself, and in particular, the sponsors.

Earlier, we looked at what the data from Sponsor Intelligence: World Cup 2026 Edition revealed about major FIFA sponsors: half of them had no measurable philanthropy and therefore showed zero community connect, and the media coverage was overwhelmingly focused on the financial investment.

Some brands did get it right though, and we’re trying to understand what they leaned on to get their stories heard by their stakeholders.

We believe there may be some lessons for anyone leading comms and sustainability, the next time a major sponsorship moment comes around.

Leaning into goodwill that already existed

The World Cup arrives with a community feeling built in. Decades of shared memory, of what it means to have your country in the tournament, or to host it. The emotion is in the room before a single sponsor activates.

Most brands arrive alongside that feeling and layer their own campaign on top — a platform developed in a boardroom, messages delivered outward, activation designed to capture the audience the event provides access to.

The brands that performed did something that sounds simple but proved rare in practice. In particular, Visa recognised a community story was already running, and found a way to be part of it. They showed up and fit seamlessly, rather than looking for a nail on which they’d hammer their narrative. 

One brand - Surprisingly Synced with Community

Among all the major World Cup sponsors, a single company stands out. Everything was stacked against it.

It is not Adidas, or Hyundai, or Kia, or Coca-Cola, it is in fact, Hisense. A Chinese electronics brand, sponsoring a tournament in North America during a period of active trade tension has the odds stacked against it. Yet, coverage around Hisense focused on tournament activations for its community. Hisense understood that community trust came from listening to their community, not demanding to be let in.

Big lessons for brands? 

For brands  towards community affairs, sustainability or corporate responsibility, this is a moment to reckon with. 

Community programmes and investments are real. Stakeholders care about the outcomes. What the data surfaces is a gap between what happens on the ground and what gets heard by the stakeholders who matter — and that gap is as much a communications challenge as anything else.

And to make matters worse for those spending big, some brands got a bit more newsworthy and ended up being more 'liked' due to FIFA's stringent sponsorship rules. For instance, Levi's was forced to cover the signs on Levi's Stadium signs with white tarps, but the shape of their "batwing" logo was so recognizable, this instantly went incredibly viral. Heinz also got big press coverage when FIFA taped over their globally distinct ketchup bottles. 

The honest question at the centre of this, for every brand that underperformed, is a straightforward one: what did we actually want from this sponsorship, and did we build the right architecture to get there?

The investment happened. The connection between that investment and a coherent, credible external narrative; something that could travel through the right channels and reach the right audiences in Boston, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and beyond — felt like a lesser priority.

What this means for the next big moment - LA 2028

The World Cup is the most visible example here. But there’s a dynamic that plays out at large sporting events - a very emotional, human one.

The next big global sporting event are the Olympics in Los Angeles, in 2028. Every single moment of joy, triumph, sadness, happiness, despair  ultimately belongs to the people and the global communities who gather together in person or virtually. Marketing budgets cannot manufacture these emotions. 

Can brands meet the moment before that?

It could happen, but it needs a huge shift of mindset. Designing programmes with investments that fit seamlessly into several different stakeholder communities, and communicating with all stakeholders with true empathy, focused more on the community and the outcomes. And most importantly, measuring the gap between how your community sees a sponsor brand, and what the brand actually has done.

What not to do: treat a sporting or a cultural moment as a branding vehicle. When we look at the data, media coverage for 9 out of 18 World Cup sponsor brands focused on investments, with zero community engagement. 

Olympics sponsors have already set their wheels in motion for 2028. Will they slow down to measure what truly matters? 
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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 request the full report, discuss a post-mortem analysis of your brand's sponsorship reputation or look ahead to the next big global sponsorship moment click here.