It is just 51 days until the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America. It all starts June 11 in Mexico City. So, to come clean, I am not really a soccer / football fan. Nor am I a fan of FIFA the organization. (That could be a whole different TMC…) But what I am a fan of is success in our sector. And whether you like FIFA or not… they have been extremely successful on the sponsorship side with this World Cup and projected overall for 2026.
When we were doing work a few years back for two of the Canadian host cities bids to be the host cities it was interesting to “understand” FIFA in more detail. They were scared. And rightfully so. For every event they have ever held, World Cup or otherwise, prior to 2026 they “owned” the event from a sponsorship and operational perspective. In fact, they owned everything. They basically “rented” host nations. The secured the venues then took them over. They told the host Nation and cities what they could and could not do. They took all the revenue from advertising in those spaces, food and beverage revenues, ticket sales revenues and every penny of sponsorship dollars as well. This was a machine to print money.
Then for 2026… the USA pushed back and said… if you want us to host, we need to generate sponsorship revenue from this event in each of our host cities. Those cities need to get that revenue (or some of it) or this is a no go. (And of course Canada and Mexico said “same here…”!)
Imagine the concerns (legitimate) that FIFA had. They were being asked to give up massive amounts of sponsorship revenues by allowing these dozens of site cities to be selling sponsorship and generating revenues from where they used to reap those rewards. This was a huge test. And a scary one for FIFA. How would they “make up” this “lost revenue”.
I have not seen any real figures for the Toronto and Vancouver host societies on local sponsorship revenue generation yet, but I have seen the numbers for FIFA for men’s World Cup 2026 in North America. Their fears were (though legitimate at the time) are in a distant past. The FIFA sponsorship revenues associated specifically for FIFA Men’s World Cup 2026 have exceeded any level of sponsorship revenue they have ever attained in the past. This single event alone will generate $1.8B. That is almost 50% of the total Canadian sponsorship revenue transactions in the best year ever for the Canadian sponsorship industry. All the combined sponsorship rights fees and activations in the best ever single year in Canada from coast to coast, thousands of sponsorships from local festivals to Scotiabank Arena naming rights type sponsorships… all of this combined just barely doubles the revenue that one organization (FIFA) will generate in sponsorship revenue from one event in 2026, the Men’s FIFA World Cup. And FIFA, when they take in all their events in 2026 across the world… they will generate $8.9 billion! That means, one organization’s sponsorship revenue will double what all the sponsorships combined in Canada spend in their best year ever!
All I can say is WOW!
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