This story is part of our week-long editorial series on how major retailers, fashion conglomerates, beauty brands and CPG startups are leveraging this year’s biggest-ever FIFA World Cup to their advantage.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off on Thursday and will continue until July 19, with matches held in 16 cities across the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
The event is set to surpass previous viewership records, with an estimated 6 billion global tournament viewers and 1.5 billion predicted to watch the final, according to FIFA. Around a third of Americans plan to tune in, according to a May YouGov survey.
It has been more than 20 years since the U.S. hosted the World Cup back in 1994. Stateside, matches over the next few weeks are scheduled for Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area. Meanwhile, Canadian host cities include Toronto and Vancouver, while Mexico will host matches in Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City.
As one might expect, official FIFA World Cup broadcast advertising partnerships are prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of the beauty, wellness, fashion and CPG markets.
According to reporting last month from pubs like Digiday and Ad Week, these start at around $15 million and go up to $85 million, with some experts calling $25 million the unofficial barrier of entry to appear on Fox, the official English-language broadcaster, or Telemundo, which has Spanish-language broadcast rights.
Those expected to invest include the usual suspects from banking, alcohol, sportswear, F&B, and transportation, such as Bank of America, Visa, Budweiser, Adidas, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Qatar Airways, plus a possible influx of AI or betting platforms.
There is, however, one personal care brand represented in FIFA’s official partners: Unilever, the tournament’s official personal care sponsor, which will promote Dove, Axe, Lynx, Degree, Sure and Radox. The conglomerate is betting on youth-focused ads and limited-edition deodorant and body-care products for men and women, many of which come with official logos and new scents and are already available for sale.
However, there are still countless ways for brands to activate around the World Cup, many of which rely on proximity, said Mark Bronzo, client director at NYC-based PJX Media, an advertising company that specializes in out-of-home formats like billboards.
For example, as of Friday, many city-specific packages are still available in host cities. These OOH ad buys include placements around stadiums and hotels, on trains and buses, and in bars and restaurants that plan to host watch- or celebration-focused parties.
“We expected more activity, if that makes sense, just from the nature of this as a huge global event with tons of teams involved and very intense fandom,” Bronzo told Glossy. “But a few factors have conspired to make it just a little bit less of a frenzy to book these specific packages.”
This includes competing events, like the NBA finals happening now or the summer Olympics planned for Los Angeles in 2028, which could be monopolizing budgets, he said. Also to consider are geopolitical unrest, rising travel costs, and a decline in U.S. tourism, which fell by 4 million visitors in 2025, according to CNN.
“[The World Cup] is spread across so many cities, so that might be diluting it in a way that it doesn’t feel like there’s pressure on any one given area the way that the Super Bowl only happens in one place,” Bronzo said. “We’re seeing that the availability isn’t really changing a ton when we go to check back in with partners [like Outfront, Clear Channel and others].”
For brands looking to sponsor a market hosting games, such as Los Angeles or Houston, there are ad buys available now that start around $100,000 and can go as high as $750,000 to $1 million for brands that want to “fully saturate a market,” Bronzo said. “It’s really about how much they want to turn up that dial and the volume of inventory they’re really keen on involving.”
“There’s definitely a lot of opportunity, and it’s not just surrounding the arena or wherever the matches are taking place; it’s capitalizing on tourist areas and where people will be congregating outside of the games,” said Allison Kallish, svp of supply and marketplace at Monks, a global advertising, marketing and technology services company headquartered in London.
Despite the kickoff game happening this Thursday, there are “always opportunities left,” Kallish said. “If you’re trying to get in the game from an on-air perspective, it’s going to be a lot more challenging, [although] there are pockets in local [markets still available].”
Kallish recommends interested brands look to “find ways to surround the event that may not be exactly in-game.” On a larger scale, this includes transportation, specifically Uber or Lyft ads, and billboards near public transport or on trains or planes.
“[Late in the game] it’s about making sure you have the right creative and the right online social and online presence,” Kallish said. “It’s about being relevant, and it’s about being a part of the conversation.”
