Experiential Marketing Set Football Fever Alight for FIFA World Cup 2026
Above: Snap from Exposure's 'Fan Cuts' campaign for viagogo
How do people experience the FIFA World Cup? It’s not confined to watching 90-minutes of play, plus a few for extra time. It’s a sustained, all-encompassing flood that fills people’s lives – celebrations and rivalries, sweepstakes and watch parties, predictions and post-match analysis.
“Few events generate the same level of passion, nostalgia, and tribalism,” says Lloyd Abbott, client partner and publicity director at Exposure. That’s why, within it, he and others who specialise in experiential see tremendous opportunity to do some of their finest work. Spectators become participants actively looking to get swept up in the experience, and they’re open to brands helping that happen – in the right way.
“Whatever the creative idea, the objective should be the same: bring fans closer to the game and the people they love, even if they’re thousands of miles from the tournament itself,” he adds.
Within the final looming this weekend, LBB’s Zara Góralczyk finds out how experiential marketing has amplified World Cup fever across the globe, speaking to For Good & Co, Zulu Alpha Kilo, Mosaic, Jack Morton, DE-YAN, Exposure, LePub New York, and Proof Experiences.
Build Momentum Before the Moment
“When we started thinking about the FIFA World Cup, one thing was clear: the most impactful brand moments wouldn't just happen during the tournament – they'd start months before the first kick-off,” says Haven Anderson, CCO at For Good & Company. Partnering with adidas, the agency needed to come up with a strategy worthy of FIFA’s oldest and longest-running brand partner, which has been a sponsor and exclusive supplier of World Cup match balls since 1970.
That meant thinking bigger than a single activation; rather, “a series of interconnected moments that create anticipation, cultural relevance, and genuine community connection over time.”
For Good & Company hosted its first experience over a year ago, whipping up early excitement with a five-day World Cup experience. More than 500 thought leaders, athletes, and football legends – including Lionel Messi and David Beckham – gathered at SoFi Stadium, one of the homes of the World Cup in Los Angeles, to explore the opportunities and cultural impact around the tournament.
The early brand milestone kicked off a long-term engagement strategy that wove an ecosystem of connected and diverse experiences, says Haven. “That included partnering with Mexican artists to celebrate the culture of fútbol, taking over youth soccer clubs with World Cup-inspired experiences, transforming retail spaces through tournament storytelling, and creating watch parties that brought fans together around the sport they love.”
Be the Host with the Most
As the World Cup has come to Canada for the first time ever, official fan destinations have seen people rush to be at the heart – a golden opportunity for brands in the tourism industry.
Destination BC is one such brand. At FIFA Fan Festival Vancouver, it made the most of the influx of tourists by whetting their appetite for further exploration through ‘Home Pitch’, in collaboration with Zulu Alpha Kilo. The multisensory installation invited fans to play football in the middle of British Columbia’s breathtaking natural landscapes, surrounding an ordinary pitch with changing 360º LED screen visuals of mountains, forests, coastlines, and vineyards, as well as spatial soundscapes.
“Every interaction reinforces the idea that British Columbia isn't just a backdrop to the World Cup, it's part of the experience itself. That's how destinations build affinity that extends beyond tourism and into long-term advocacy,” say Zulu Alpha Kilo associate creative directors, Carlos Veras and Dylan Thompson.
“If playing inside these landscapes inspires someone to explore the wonders of BC, then the experience has done its job. The brands that stand out aren't the ones with the biggest presence; they're the ones that leave people with a stronger connection to the place and the memories they made there.”
Mosaic’s activation for Samsung at Canada Soccer House also invited fans to explore the host city – while cleverly enticing them to engage in product demonstrations – by challenging them to use the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s powerful camera to find the Canadian flags flying across the city. At FIFA Fan Fest, it had LEGO fans build their own brick jerseys, test their soccer skills to win prizes, and snap photos with a giant trophy replica and oversized player figurines.
Canada’s World Cup takeover extends beyond the official fan destinations. Mosaic also helped Diageo transform multiple venues into the “most playful places to watch the games,” says creative director Anthony Hachez. “At Rendezviews in Toronto, Casamigos' iconic teal took over the space so consumers could watch in the best conditions: giant screens to not miss a second of the game, parasols shading fans from the heat, World Cup-inspired decor to immerse people in the atmosphere, and a series of playful soccer games.”
Sow Hype on Home Soil
The opportunities aren’t limited to host countries. “With this World Cup being the most geographically split and expansive tournament in history, not to mention the feeling of exclusion around ticket prices, it’s no surprise that football fans globally have craved a sense of closer proximity and connection from home soil,” observes Dan Lord, Jack Morton’s regional ECD in the Middle East and North Africa. Brands have the resources to feed that hunger, which has become louder in Dan’s region in recent years since hosting in 2022.
Putting a local spin on its approach, Jack Morton worked with adidas and Visa to design a place that Saudi fans could call home, tapping into elements only that community could understand. Dan describes how the experience hub in Riyadh put local football culture before commerce: “[It was] a place to play physically and virtually, to release the competitive energy, recreate the match moments, adorn and customise your national team kit, chat about last night’s action at the news stand and brush shoulders with local legends of the game.”
Bring the World to Fans’ Doorsteps
DE-YAN’s approach with Puma was broader in geographical ambition. Creative director May Ghadanfar explains how 11 trucks popped up in New York City, each bringing a taste of a different nation as part of its kit reveal. That was a big responsibility: “Each community must feel researched rather than symbolically included. The challenge is creating one coherent brand world without flattening the cultures that give the World Cup its meaning.”
Then there’s the time pressure of a fixed World Cup calendar. “It compresses approvals, fabrication, transportation, and installation, while late pivots create downstream effects. Thorough design development, clear decision points, and trusted production partners gave us flexibility when approvals shifted, technical constraints emerged, or site conditions required a fast response,” says May.
The final event took the form of an inclusive, large-scale block party celebrating the coexistence of diverse communities, with local food, artists, chants, styling, and records. Guests were also able to shape their experiences through customisation opportunities, selecting records, and taking home hand-painted keepsakes.
Leave a (Semi-Permanent) Impression
viagogo and Exposure came up with a whackier way to leave fans with a lasting memento. A footie-themed makeover.
The online ticket marketplace worked with the agency to seize upon an aspect of football that’s legendary without being the obvious choice: the hair. Players have never been shy to experiment with bleach, braids, and buzzcuts galore, inspiring fans to follow in their heroes’ footsteps straight to the barber. The brand’s consumer research revealed that 46% of gen-z fans asked their parents for such hairstyles growing up and 67% believe them to be as memorable as the matches themselves.
Enter World Cuts, London’s free pop-up barber shop entirely dedicated to the cause.
“Footballers’ hairstyles have become part of tournament folklore, so we recreated iconic looks from Carlos Valderrama’s famous curls to David Beckham’s mohawk, giving fans a fun, nostalgic way to celebrate together,” says Exposure’s client partner and publicity director, Lloyd Abbott, who leads viagogo’s account.
He adds that “the best experiential campaigns give people a story they’ll still be telling long after the final whistle,” and if committing to a whole new trim wasn’t enough for that, a live Q&A with Harry Redknapp and John Barnes was.
Being one of the busiest moments in global marketing, the team needed to cut through the noise as well as fans’ hair. “That’s why we created multiple earned moments around the activation to ensure we stayed part of the conversation. This included social-first content to playful fan-led stunts, such as Manchester United fan, The United Strand, convincing the world he’d cut his hair (11 million organic views) to having an England fan embrace a Thomas Tuchel trim.”
Be Genuinely Useful
For LePub New York CCO, Jim Curtis, the competition for attention isn’t really against other brands; he argues that “it's everything else fans could be doing with their time.” Being actually useful gives you a genuine shot at winning.
Noting that nearly half of this year’s matches fall during the US workday, LePub and Heineken offered a practical solution so employees wouldn’t have to secretly stream at their desks: volunteer time off (VTO). This real, underused corporate benefit allows workers to use paid hours to do good in their community without taking away from their paid time off (PTO), so Heineken created opportunities for fans to watch the tournament while volunteering. It’s already helped provide thousands of meals to people in need, and clear thousands of feet of green space.
Jim highlights the existence of another tension in the US, where sports culture runs deep but isn’t necessarily native to soccer. “We had an opportunity to use Heineken’s position as the Official Beer of Soccer to make soccer feel like it belongs to everyone, whether you've watched your whole life or you're just joining the conversation,” he says, adding how additional campaigns like its soccer translation OOH has helped “newer fans finding their footing in the sport and learning the language.”
Understand the Context You’re Entering
Interruption is one of the critical faux pas of experiential marketing. Getting in the way of people trying to live their lives is no way to warm them to you. But that’s a little harder when your client is a transportation agency, and all users have somewhere else to be.
“Instead of asking people to stop, we designed for people who were on the move,” says Lorne Cooperberg, EVP of growth and innovation at Proof Experience, of its work with Metrolinx.
“At Toronto Pearson Airport, Union Station and Exhibition Station, our teams created spontaneous moments of delight that fit naturally into the journey, like post-game entertainment to improve wait times, helping visitors and locals maintain the excitement of the tournament while navigating the city,” he adds. “One of our favourite elements was an interactive world map where travellers placed a sticker on the country they were supporting. Over the course of the tournament, the installation became a living snapshot of global fandom passing through Toronto.”
Lorne, like others, makes the point that successful experiential during the World Cup is not reliant on shouting or spectacle: “It's about understanding the context you're entering, both from a fan’s experience and the role the brand plays within it. Sometimes success means stopping people in their tracks. Other times, it means making their journey just a little more memorable without ever getting in the way. The brands that win are the ones that understand the difference.”
