We came a long way so far. As you may remember, the series opened with a scene of myself at five years old wanting the USA 94 gear — a kid who had no concept of licensing deals or commercial cycles, who just wanted to be part of something she didn’t yet understand.

Four posts later, we’ve traced how that feeling was built: the foundational mythology of Era 1: posters, radio commentary, and the storytelling that preceded any commercial infrastructure; the television revolution and the cult of personality of Era 2, the social media layer and the personal brand empire of Era 3, and the revenuemaxxing architecture of Era 4, with FIFA operating as a vertically integrated enterprise, and an ICP that has shifted from the football fan to the corporate buyer.

The question at the end of Part 4 was: can the thing that makes the World Cup worth $13 billion1 survive the model built on top of it?

We don’t have the answer yet, obviously, since the last details of the 2026 World Cup are still being settled as this is written. But I wanted to look a bit into the future and think about how the children being born now will experience what I experienced in 1994.

This is Part 5 — and the last one — of a 5-part series on the commercial history of the FIFA World Cup. This series started with a simple question: how did a football tournament become the most commercially powerful property in the world? Four posts answered that. This one asks what comes next, which means stepping out of analysis and into something closer to informed speculation.

If you missed the previous parts, find them here:

• Part 1: Before It Was a Business

• Part 2: Heroes, Villains, and Sponsorship Deals

• Part 3: When the Event Went Truly Global

• Part 4: The Empire Prices Itself

What We Know So Far: 2030 and 2034

Two World Cups beyond 2026 are already confirmed, and the decisions around them tell enough about where FIFA’s priorities sit.

2030 is the first centenary of this competition — 100 years since Uruguay hosted the first tournament. FIFA’s solution is commercially ambitious and logistically staggering: Spain, Portugal, and Morocco host the majority of matches across an expected 17 cities and approximately 20 stadiums2, with the final venue reportedly still to be confirmed between Spain and Morocco. Uruguay will host the opener at the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo, with Argentina and Paraguay each hosting a single celebratory match3. Six nations across three continents, all qualifying automatically.

Football Supporters Europe called it FIFA’s “cycle of destruction.”4 The intercontinental travel this format requires — 13-hour flights between Buenos Aires and Madrid for fans following their team — is both a logistical nightmare and an ESG worst-case at a moment when sustainability scrutiny of major events is at its highest. The centenary was an opportunity to return to where it started, and it could have been straightforward — Argentina, Uruguay, and one or two neighbouring nations could have provided the required stadiums between them. Instead, FIFA used it to create the largest hosting footprint in tournament history.

The commercial logic looks coherent on paper, even if the optics don’t. Six automatic host qualifications means six commercial ecosystems activated simultaneously: six national federations deploying their full sponsor portfolios against a guaranteed World Cup platform. The co-branding architecture that defined 2026 scales to six countries in 2030. Whether it holds together operationally is a different question. And the branding complexity is real: Spain, South American countries that were former Spanish colonies, and Portugal and Morocco all bring overlapping and occasionally competing cultural identities to the same tournament. If you want to understand how Spanish colonization shaped football in South America, the Copa Libertadores is the clearest example — named after the heroes of Latin American independence from Spanish colonial rule, among them José de San Martín (yes, the one who crossed the Andes) and Simón Bolívar.

What’s also worth watching is the qualification structure, particularly in CONMEBOL: with 10 member associations in the federation, 3 qualifying automatically as hosts, and — under the expected allocation — 3 qualifying directly through the qualifying tournament, that would leave two teams in the playoff. If those teams win, CONMEBOL would have eight out of ten of its members at a single World Cup. That has never happened before in any confederation, and it raises real questions about competitive balance and the meaning of qualification.

2034 tells a more direct story. Saudi Arabia was confirmed as sole host at the same Extraordinary FIFA Congress — the only eligible bidder under confederation rotation rules restricting the award to AFC and OFC nations5, given that UEFA, CONMEBOL, and CAF were all involved in hosting 2030. The tournament will almost certainly run November–December, as Qatar 2022 did. Aramco’s 2024 signing as a Major Worldwide Partner (energy category through 2027) was read by analysts as the financial precondition for the hosting award — a commercial relationship established before the hosting decision was formalized.

The human rights debate will replay the Qatar template exactly: migrant labor conditions, women’s rights, alcohol policy, sponsor due-diligence playbooks developed for Qatar repurposed for Riyadh. The estimated new stadium-only spend is of $20 billion6 — a figure that puts the scale in context when compared to Germany’s entire 2006 organizing budget of €425 million7.

The Technology Layer

A few things already operational will define what the World Cup looks like in twenty years.

The ball is a data product. The Adidas Trionda used at 2026 features Connected Ball Technology similar to Qatar 2022’s Al Rihla — an inertial measurement unit transmitting positional data at up to 500Hz to match officials in real time8. Qatar 2022 deployed semi-automated offside technology for the first time — 12 dedicated cameras per stadium plus the ball sensor9. The real-time positional data infrastructure is live; the commercial and broadcast applications are the next layer. 93% of fans say they will second-screen on mobile during matches, scrolling while play continues during the 2026 FIFA World Cup10. This is already the operational baseline.

Piracy is a structural challenge that isn’t going away. More than 40,000 unauthorized streaming links were detected during Russia 2018, and these figures represented 41,371,139 viewers11. The commercial implication is direct: every unauthorized stream is an audience that sponsors paid to reach and didn’t. FIFA’s content protection investment and its market development investment are pointing at the same audiences from opposite directions.

Streaming is already the primary distribution architecture. Brazil’s CazéTV model of delivering all 104 matches on YouTube, the Tubi free-access layer in the US — the single dominant broadcast partner is already gone. The Rest Is Football — Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards’s hit podcast — becomes a daily Netflix show throughout the 2026 World Cup, filmed in New York, marking Netflix’s first ever daily show in the UK12.

The question for 2030 and beyond is which streaming architecture captures the full global audience, including the ones currently watching for free on platforms FIFA doesn’t control.

The Sponsorship Categories of 204613

The legacy sponsor architecture of the World Cup — food & beverage, apparel, automotive, electronics — was built in the 1980s and has been eroding at the edges ever since. Tobacco left in 1986. Imaging and film (Fuji, JVC, and Canon were all World Cup sponsors) exited during the 2000s. Beer and soft drinks face growing regulatory pressure in health-conscious markets and are already navigating alcohol bans in host countries.

What replaces it is partly visible and partly open.

🏆 Big Tech is the largest open question: Apple and Amazon are not yet FIFA Partners. Neither company has made a structural commitment to football sponsorship at this level14. If either does before 2034, it reshapes the entire commercial architecture — the distribution layer, the data layer, and the brand layer collapsing into a single partner relationship. Whether it does is the most commercially consequential uncertainty in football sponsorship right now.

🏆 AI will reshape the experience in two directions simultaneously. The concern is real: AI-generated content (deepfake footage, fabricated player quotes, synthetic match highlights) already circulates in lower-stakes digital environments, and the risk of it contaminating how major events are experienced is not hypothetical. The organic emotional power of something like the 7-1 in 2014 — a moment rooted in real, verifiable events — now competes in the same information environment as convincing fabrications. That’s a new kind of vulnerability for a property whose value is built on authentic narrative. The optimistic version is equally real: AI is already being considered for automated highlights, multi-language commentary, and real-time personalization at scale. AI-generated broadcast commentary tailored to individual viewers, in their language and adapted to technical knowledge, is a near-term application. Both directions are coming. Which one dominates the fan experience is an open question.

🏆 Brand identity and positioning may be forced to evolve. Formula 1 has spent the last decade repositioning itself as a premium, luxury-adjacent property — the Drive to Survive effect brought a new audience, and LVMH’s partnership cemented the aesthetic. Will FIFA follow a similar path, with brand identity calibrated to the host country and its audience each cycle? And if it does — luxury in 2034 Riyadh, something else in 2038, something else again in 2042 — does that coherence cost something? The risk of chasing the F1 model is that F1 owns a specific audience. The World Cup’s power has always come from owning every audience simultaneously.

🏆 In-stadium and in-home advertising is already transforming — faster than most people realise. Virtual Board Replacement technology is already deployed across the Bundesliga, UEFA EURO 2024, the NBA, and the NHL15 — meaning a viewer in Manchester and a viewer in Tokyo could watch the same match with different brands on the pitch-side boards, simultaneously. Dynamic advertising that changes message based on live match events is the next layer. For viewers watching at home on OTT platforms, personalized advertising based on consumption history could be the next operational move. The Coca-Cola first ad from the 1950s was a static asset visible to everyone in the stadium. The equivalent in 2046 will be a real-time, market-specific, viewer-specific message that doesn’t exist as a physical object at all.

🏆 Live and gaming experiences are already being reinvented. FIFA Super Soccer on Roblox — launched in December 2025 with 9.5 million monthly active users16 — already lets players compete as official national teams. During the FIFA Club World Cup 2025, a Roblox activation generated 20 million gameplay sessions, and 61% of surveyed players said it made them more likely to watch the real tournament. FIFA has also partnered with Netflix, Epic Games, and SEGA as part of a broader digital gaming ecosystem ahead of 202617. This is already the present — the question is what it scales into. VR stadium experiences for those who can’t attend in person are the logical next layer, and the infrastructure for it is being built now.

🏆 EVs are the most likely near-term entrant. Hyundai and Kia set the precedent at Korea/Japan 2002 and have never left. BYD, Tesla, and Polestar are the credible next wave — brands whose target demographics overlap with the World Cup’s premium international audience and who need the global platform that only the World Cup provides.

🏆 The Saudi dimension is different in kind from the others. Aramco is already a FIFA partner. PIF-backed brands are likely to form a structural commercial pillar at 2034 — not filling a category gap, but potentially replacing the Western legacy stack wholesale. The Visit Saudi episode at the 2023 Women’s World Cup18 — added as a sponsor, then dropped after a player revolt — was the clearest precedent for sponsor backlash forcing FIFA’s hand on geopolitics. What that precedent means for 2034, when Saudi Arabia is both host and major commercial partner, is genuinely open. It is the most complex tension in the commercial future of the World Cup, and it has no clean resolution.

What the World Cup Becomes

The series started with a question that felt simple: how did a football tournament become the most commercially powerful sporting property in the world?

The answer, across four posts, is that it didn’t happen by design. Era 1 built emotional infrastructure without commercial intent. Era 2 built commercial architecture around television and individuals who weren’t trying to be brands. Era 3 turned accidental assets into an empire through social media, and the understanding that narrative can outrun contractual rights. Era 4 priced all of it explicitly for the first time.

The next twenty years will be shaped by whether the thing that made all of that possible — the feeling that the World Cup belongs to everyone, that it is the place where dreams come true — survives the commercial logic built on top of it.

The honest answer is: probably yes, with significant and visible cost.

The emotional foundation has absorbed a great deal already. It absorbed Italy 1934 and Argentina 1978. It absorbed FIFAGate and Qatar. It absorbed the ICP shift from fan to corporate buyer, the price of a hospitality package that most fans will never see. Each time, the tournament produced something that reminded you why the infrastructure exists — a Maracanazo, a Goal of the Century, a night in Buenos Aires when strangers hugged each other in the street.

The child who will one day write about 2026 the way I'm writing about 1994 is somewhere right now, watching the World Cup for the first time, not thinking about commercial cycles or ICP shifts or co-branding architecture. They are watching because something is happening that feels like it matters.

What that child is watching has never been more commercially sophisticated, more geopolitically entangled, or more expensive to produce and attend and activate around. And it has never been more capable of producing the moment that makes all of that irrelevant.

Whether those two things can continue to coexist — at $13 billion, at 48 teams, at 2034 in Saudi Arabia, at wherever the future lands — is the question the next twenty years will answer. We don’t have the answer yet. But someone will be watching.

What does the World Cup look like in 2046? Let’s discuss below.

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

Subscribe to get it in your inbox:

Subscribe now

We're back to analyze how the latest squad announcements rolled out over the past week1. However, our focus isn’t on the names themselves—it’s about how these video presentations reflect brand identity and what the national team actually means to the fans.

That’s why squad announcement spots shouldn't be taken for granted anymore; they've evolved into powerful communication tools to build hype and set the tone for the upcoming World Cup.

Before starting, something I became aware of (thanks to you readers) is that this is apparently an idea that is commonly seen in the NFL. I believe that, in an era where we are so conflicted about the “Superbowlization” of football, seeing a practice adapted in a distinctly football-specific, identity-driven way is actually encouraging.

Let’s start with Canada, who posted their announcement 2 days ago. The presentation itself isn’t much to write about: names with players and a back-and-forth transition to a building that I assume is the CN Tower in Toronto — please confirm. I brought this example because it’s the only one of the three hosts that chose video over an in-person event.

Now, speaking of hosts, we need to talk about in-person events like the one done by Ancelotti in Brazil, which has also been replicated by South Africa and, not long ago, the USA — with their coach announcing the roster with the already-named players present. This is something that sounds similar to how NBA players enter the arena and looks very USA-like, though I was expecting something more Hollywood-like and more memorable, considering they are the kings of movies.

The real question is: what did they want to say? That doesn’t mean all squad announcements must mean something, but considering that a video was absent and a personal presentation was the medium of choice, perhaps the goal was to show unity — to the players present, and to the people watching.

But of course, unity to their people can be displayed by the people themselves. And this is what Spain did, in a similar modus operandi to Bosnia — but with some specific distinctive attributes of Spanish identity that should be mentioned.

The first is the presence of craft by workers, men and women. It is important because they speak of how workers build day by day the country that is now supporting their national team. People also participate in the naming of players that made it to the squad, with landscapes interacting with the narrative.

The timing is also very subtle and perfect. Unlike Norway, they started with the coach and finished with the King of Spain, Felipe, who is also a present figure in football — the Copa del Rey, the Cup of the King, is always awarded by the King.

Furthermore, the wording he brings up is important: “porque cuando juega nuestra selección jugamos todos” — when our team plays, we all play. We are supporting them — but the message is that we are also part of how they perform.

Subtle, elegant and strong. I believe it’s one of my favourites, though not the favourite in this new round.

The Netherlands also did their announcement but it felt standard, except for the reference to the orange — and perhaps I’m missing some specific references because I’m not a local.

My favourite is definitely Uruguay, a spot presented today that delivered a masterclass in identity, community and — funnily — product placement.

The format isn’t new — player names appearing in everyday locations, like England did. But there are people interacting with them, in common attributes of Uruguay’s everyday life: the hairdresser chat, friends drinking coffee, kids swapping stickers after school, people drinking mate, a man going on a boat. The fact that people — not players like in France, not the storytelling itself like England — are connecting the dots is what makes it strong.

The song choice is just as important: “Cielo de un solo color” (sky of a single color) — a popular Rioplatense2 song by the band No Te Va Gustar — sings about the harsh life and experiences of Uruguayan people and the ability to thrive. The song became popular in 2010, during the national team’s 4th-place finish. Performed by a rock band in collaboration with a murga band (murga being a music genre exclusive to Uruguay and extremely popular there) it has a strong chorus that sings “ay celeste regálame un sol” (oh light blue, give me a sun), which recalls the “celeste”, the nickname of the Uruguayan national team, and the reference to the sun, which also appears on the Uruguayan flag.

The spot finishes with two young men identifying someone on a bike who turns out to be Marcelo Bielsa, the national team’s coach — a widely known figure worldwide, also known for his love of cycling. All the performances, including Bielsa’s, are amazing and give us the possibility to enter the everyday life of Uruguay and how life is lived there.

And regarding product placement: throughout the spot, different sponsors of the national team appear — a bank, a mobile phone company, among others. But they play specific roles in the narrative and might even look organic to someone who isn’t aware that those are brands in Uruguay.3

Now let’s cross the River Plate4 to the spot of the reigning champions of the Cup of Life: Argentina. I might not be objective, and curiously enough, everything I was hoping to watch happened. But differences in idea and execution can significantly affect the outcome.

The video starts at the Argentine FA training ground — named after Lionel Messi following the 2022 title — where we see in perfect definition a mural of the team that lifted the cup, a man on a machine mowing the lawn, and then the offices of the national team — where we imagine, and our imagination matches reality, that the first character in this spot is Lionel Scaloni, the main character of the previous 2022 announcement. Scaloni has already chosen his final list and he’s ready to send it to FIFA.

But he decides that someone special is going to send it: Marito. This choice is not random — and I believe it’s the strongest and most positive decision made for the announcement.

Marito is not just anyone; he’s the historic kit man, and in football that is a role for unsung heroes, for silent soldiers. He’s the one who knows that, without him, players can’t play, but he doesn’t care about the credits. He’s one of them, but he’s also one of us. Argentina has a historical relationship between kit men and champions, with a legendary bond between Diego Maradona and the 1986 national team’s kit man Galíndez. So yes, the decision to include Marito is very Argentine and perhaps not easy to identify as a brand attribute for foreigners, but I find it very strong.

Scaloni asks Marito to send the list “con la fuerza de todos los argentinos” (with the strength of all the Argentine people). The scene cuts to a series of images of the heroes of yesteryear alongside the heroes of today: Kempes, Maradona, and the 2022 national team squad with Messi as their leader. We can also see a Diego sanctuary that I believe is in the Argentinos Juniors museum.5

And now the list travels — hand to hand, “con la fuerza de todos los argentinos” — with a song in the background called “Tierra Zanta” — a play on “tierra santa” (holy land) — by the trap singer Trueno6, which became popular during the 2022 World Cup7.

But let’s talk about the people and the places. Argentina is a rather long country that spans different geographies — the puna, the Andes, the jungle with the Iguazú Falls, and Patagonia being the most well-known.

The list travels to a young man in the center of Buenos Aires, a kid at a monument in Rosario, a woman in the northwest of Argentina 2,200 meters above sea level, a young woman in a park in Mendoza (the land of Malbec wine), and a man in the the southernmost urban settlement on the planet: Ushuaia.

And here’s the thing: I can understand that the obvious choices for identity positioning — namely, the Iguazú Falls and Patagonia with the Perito Moreno glacier — were skipped in favour of places more distinctive to football and Argentine culture, like Rosario, the city where Messi was born, and Ushuaia.

But the execution is the issue: the decision to use AI-generated images of low quality creates a non-organic, erratic effect that makes the viewer lose the premise of “la fuerza de todos los argentinos.” And details matter — we can expect some level of excellence from a brand that became an economic powerhouse at the national team level because of its history, its trophies, and the presence of Lionel Messi.

The low image quality completely contradicts having Google Gemini as a partner, especially since Gemini generates some of the best AI images out there right now. Honestly, it would have been easier and way more impactful to just have people from those locations record themselves passing an envelope on their phones. It would have felt so much more authentic and intimate.

The spot finishes with the squad list, with a background of somewhere supposedly in Kansas — but I read somewhere that it may not be. Can’t confirm.

In a nutshell: as a local, I feel disappointed by the outcome. As a marketing professional, my take is that the result didn’t land at the level of quality expected of a renowned football brand like the Argentine national team.8

A P.S. about New Zealand. Even though I stand by my words about the rights and wrongs of the squad announcements, the presentation is now gaining more and more visibility after the unexpected fame of defender Tim Payne.

Which ones did you enjoy the most? And which ones did I get completely wrong? Let’s discuss below.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

We are entering the final countdown — 14 days until the 2026 World Cup kick-off. And to start talking about what’s to come, keeping with the tradition of these editions, I’ll start with a personal anecdote.

There was the final between Argentina and France on the 18th of December 2022, on a hot evening in Buenos Aires. We were prepared with all kinds of cabalas — rituals — and appetizers, but we were not prepared for the third goal that tied the match in extra time. That was the last straw for me, and I decided to leave my house with the premise of “I just cannot stand the penalties.”1

So there I was, wandering around my neighbourhood — which you may imagine was completely empty, except for the remaining fellow Argentinians who had the same issue: whether it was being unable to watch the extra time, the penalties, or the match at all2.

So I started walking and that’s where I heard a scream being repeated simultaneously all around: “Vamos Dibu” (Go Dibu). At that point I didn’t understand what was happening, but with enough footage and coverage since, we can all agree that was the moment of Dibu Martínez covering Kolo Muani’s last attempt.

At one point I found a bar with at least 30 people watching the match, and this was my best chance to read the mood. The landscape was as follows: people crying, a man lying down on the asphalt covering his eyes (don’t worry, he was fine — if fine meant alive), families hugging. And so it went: I started walking the 100 metres back and forth, from and to the bar, until the last one.

And so that one entered the net, and there I was, 100 metres from my home, running like crazy to see my family as quickly as possible, and in the meantime I hugged a woman I had never seen and have never seen since. I saw old and young crying in a way I had never seen in my life. It was probably what I felt too: a cry of release, of meeting the dream of our lives — of all of our lives.

I know there were people from around the world who wanted this to happen because of one Lionel Messi, and that’s something amazing that happens in this beautiful game. But for me and for the people surrounding me, it was for us — for those who wanted to dream and still did.

And now here we are, three and a half years later. I wanted to bring this up (besides keeping the tradition) because that feeling, that memory, is what the World Cup has always meant to me. But the question for me, for you, and for everyone is: what now?

The only thing I’m certain about, two weeks before kick-off, is that I was watching the last match of an era that was already ending. The 2026 World Cup is the first one this series is writing about in real time, and the commercial decisions that define it are happening simultaneously with the tournament about to begin.

This is Part 4 of a 5-part series on the commercial history of the FIFA World Cup. I want to understand how a sporting event became the most commercially powerful property in the world — and to do that, we need to go back to where we left off last week.

If you missed Part 3, find it here:

Revenuemaxxing™ and the Revenue Curve

FIFA reports revenue in four-year cycles anchored on the World Cup year, capturing roughly 80–85% of cycle revenue. The arc:

• 2014 Brazil: ~$1.4bn in marketing rights, record-breaking at the time, marked by social protests

• 2018 Russia: $1.45bn, dipped following the FIFAGate 2015 indictments

• 2022 Qatar: ~$1.8bn, commercial recovery, record retail and hospitality

• 2023–2026: $13bn, revised twice upward from an initial $11bn projection, as of March 2025

Going from $1.8bn to $13bn in a single cycle is not growth in the normal sense. It’s a structural change in what FIFA is now.

The name for that change is revenuemaxxing3: FIFA operating as a vertically integrated business unit optimizing revenue across every touchpoint of its commercial universe — closer a Saas like Apple than to a governing body, whose product is the experience itself, built to capture value at every layer, whose ideal customer has shifted from the general consumer to the premium one.

The composition of the $13bn shows how. Broadcasting at $3.92bn and marketing at $2.69bn track the established pattern, broadcasting grew roughly 30% from Qatar’s $3bn, marketing roughly 50% from Qatar’s 1.8bn.

But hospitality and ticketing at $3.097bn is new: for the first time in World Cup history, equal to broadcasting as a revenue source. FIFA unlocked that number by insourcing hospitality (previously outsourced under a rights-fee model) and by building the tournament around NFL stadiums with luxury suite inventory that Qatar’s purpose-built venues couldn’t match.

The Co-Branding Architecture

The 2026 World Cup has three hosts, 16 host cities, and a commercial architecture unlike anything FIFA has attempted before; one in which the host’s political brand, commercial identity, and national narrative are woven directly into the tournament’s own positioning. This is what I’m calling co-branding: not just hosting, but co-authoring the commercial universe around the event.

The US market is the engine. Bank of America entered as the first-ever global sponsor in the banking category, with a reported $100 million investment — described as the largest in its sports marketing history.

Verizon joined as Official Telecommunication Services Sponsor, centered on stadium connectivity. Neither of these brands came in as football sponsors. They came in because the 2026 World Cup is the closest thing to Super Bowl-level commercial saturation available in the North American market, and that saturation was the product they were buying.

The host city supporters program extends the architecture downward. Each local organizing committee can sign up to ten companies at approximately $5 million per package, carrying city-specific marks rather than official FIFA logos. Houston is targeting up to $90 million from local backers alone. Cities have become commercial participants in the tournament rather than venues for it, co-branding partners at the municipal level.

From Democratizing to Productizing

FIFA has consistently framed every expansion as a mission statement about inclusion. The 1998 expansion from 24 to 32 teams was real in its consequences: Senegal’s quarterfinal run in 2002 and Ghana’s last eight in 2010 happened because the format created space for them. The democratization narrative earned its credibility.

The 48-team format tells a different story. 104 matches instead of 64, more inventory, more access points for broadcasters and commercial partners — the format decision is as much about revenue architecture as about football. And the decisions surrounding it follow the same logic: hospitality insourcing, tiered sponsorship with category exclusivity, a host city supporters program that turns municipalities into commercial entities. Every level of access is priced and packaged, from global partner down to local supporter.

Furthermore, 5.5 million tickets are projected for 2026, more than any previous edition. But what’s under pressure is the sense that it belongs to everyone, which has always been the source of its emotional power. When the premium hospitality tier generates as much revenue as the broadcast, and when the ICP has shifted from the football fan to the corporate buyer, the answer to “who is this for?” starts to look different.

The Marketing Stack of Era 4

Era 4 is also the era in which the World Cup became genuinely global as a business, not just as a competition. The expansion to 48 teams in 2026 opens qualification paths across confederations that have historically been underrepresented, but unlike the 1998 expansion, the commercial rationale here is explicit from the start. The marketing stack built on top of it reflects that logic at every layer.

🏆 Mascots became a three-way co-branding statement For the first time in World Cup history, the 2026 edition has three official mascots, one per host nation: Clutch (a bald eagle for the US), Zayu (a jaguar for Mexico), and Maple (a moose for Canada). Unveiled in September 2025, the trio mirrors the tournament’s co-hosting architecture in a way no previous mascot program has. All three were designed with digital and social deployment as the primary channel—characters built backwards from platforms rather than as plush toys. The question this raises is whether a mascot trio optimized for social media can generate the individual intergenerational attachment that made single mascots like Footix commercially durable across decades.

🏆 Logos became motion assets The 2026 World Cup logo is the first in the tournament’s history designed to animate by default. Built for digital deployment from the ground up, the physical version is treated as a secondary application. The logo has moved from a cultural artifact, to a brand asset, to a motion asset distributed natively across every platform.

🏆 Anthems fragmented beyond recovery No World Cup anthem since Shakira’s “Waka Waka” in 2010 has achieved standalone cultural footprint — surviving the tournament that produced it as a recognizable artifact in its own right. The multi-track, multi-artist strategy of 2018 and 2022 optimized for territorial market reach at the direct expense of the cultural concentration that makes a single song become the sound of a summer. The anthem economy of the World Cup, which peaked with Ricky Martin in 1998 and produced its last genuinely universal moment in 2010, has become a licensing portfolio.

🏆 Jerseys became a fashion category Argentina’s three-star post-Qatar 2022 shirt was reportedly the best-selling national kit of 2023 globally, purchased as a cultural object regardless of the buyer’s actual team affiliation. This era also elevated the pre-match jersey from a functional warm-up top to a standalone fashion asset. Because they exist outside the rigid design rules of official on-pitch kits, brands have turned pre-match wear into a playground for bolder, lifestyle-driven aesthetics that appeal directly to the streetwear market. It is the natural conclusion of a process that began when Brazil’s yellow first popped on color television: the garment’s commercial value is no longer strictly tied to what happens on the pitch.

🏆 Broadcast fragmented into a portfolio model No single distribution channel reaches the full 2026 audience. In the US, Fox Sports carries English-language rights, Telemundo/Peacock carries the full slate in Spanish, and Tubi (free-to-air) airs select key matches. In Brazil, CazéTV carries all 104 matches on YouTube with no traditional broadcast partner. The model is now a portfolio of distribution channels, each optimized for a different audience segment.

🏆 Digital infrastructure became the primary commercial universe The parallel digital ecosystem that began with EA Sports’ FIFA International Soccer launching in December 1993 (before the 1994 World Cup had even started) has matured into the dominant commercial layer of the tournament. The Panini digital sticker album for Qatar 2022 reached 27 million users. FIFA+ launched as an OTT streaming platform. EA’s franchise generates billions annually regardless of whether the World Cup is happening. Every touchpoint now has a commercial layer, and every commercial layer connects to every other: the tournament has become a content universe with football at its center, and that universe is large enough that football is no longer required to activate it.

The Fragile Economics Layer

The $13bn commercial cycle creates a concentration of risk no previous edition has faced. The $900 million cancellation insurance FIFA held for Qatar 2022, significant at the time, would cover less than 7% of the 2026 projection. Insourcing hospitality means FIFA is carrying operational risk it previously transferred to rights-holders. Prize money confirmed at $871m, over double the $440m distributed in Qatar, means national federations are more financially dependent on the tournament’s full delivery than at any prior edition.

The co-branding architecture adds a different kind of exposure. Qatar 2022 was politically complex, but Qatar had total sovereign control over its environment.

The $625 million in federal security funding for US host cities is the clearest illustration of this exposure. Congress passed the funding under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025, but the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA stalled the release for months. Hindered by three separate federal funding lapses, the agencies missed their own internal January 30, 2026 deadline, leaving host cities in operational limbo just months before the tournament. Lawmakers and local organizers sounded the alarm, warning that the delay threatened years of careful preparation and left municipalities waiting on critical cash flow for police and emergency response. The money was eventually released on March 18, 2026—less than twelve weeks before kick-off.

The tournament’s commercial architecture assumed a reliable federal co-organizer. What it got was a co-organizer that delivered, but on a timeline that exposed exactly how dependent that architecture is on political and legislative factors FIFA doesn’t control.

The current US political context creates specific risks for a tournament whose commercial thesis depends on the free movement of fans, athletes, and commercial partners across North American borders.

What This Era Is Building

This is the part of the series where I’d normally summarize what the era built. But the era isn’t over — the 2026 World Cup hasn’t been played. The final at MetLife Stadium is scheduled for July 19, and none of the numbers we’ve been discussing are settled yet.

What we can say is that Era 4 has made the World Cup into something the previous three eras were building toward without fully naming: a vertically integrated commercial enterprise that captures value at every layer of the experience, tied to the political and institutional context of its hosts in ways that create both opportunity and exposure, optimized for a customer who is increasingly not the fan who built the tournament’s emotional foundation.

The question is whether that foundation can carry the weight of what’s been built on top of it. The 2022 Qatar final (and everything that night in Buenos Aires meant) suggests it still can. But the gap between the commercial logic and the emotional logic that made this worth anything has never been wider, and 2026 will tell us more about where that gap is going than any previous edition.

In Part 5 (and last of this series) we’ll look into the future of the World Cup as a commercial property, and what comes after the empire.

What do you think? Let’s discuss below.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

Subscribe to get it in your inbox:

Subscribe now

This week, we were bombarded with the same topic throughout the socials — but mainly Twitter: squad announcements.

Once a simple task of posting who’s going and who’s not to the greatest event in football, they now come with huge surprises and genuinely amazing content. This past week alone, we went from talking about Scotland qualifying to falling in love (again) with Ewan McGregor’s voice, flashy video colors, lovely landscapes, sweet family pictures, and the greatest band of all time.

World Cup squad announcements have now changed from a simple list of names (Argentina, famously, had a low-key announcement right before becoming champions in 2022) to a whole positioning statement. And I say positioning deliberately: these announcements are now mixing brand identity, core values, cultural and emotional heritage, and not least, the ability to do more with less.

Before we start, three disclaimers:

1. I’ll only talk about announcements that included a video, not just a squad list posted.

2. I’ll cover the ones already out. Part two with the upcoming ones next week.

3. This is completely subjective. Even if I could score them objectively across criteria like identity, production, and creativity, there are so many aspects that feel personal to me that I’d rather be honest about it and hear your thoughts too. I might also miss some contextual or cultural details, so please let me know.

Let me start with the ones that didn’t make it to the top five and why.

The one that hurt me the most to leave out is Senegal’s — the brand identity built around lions (their national team being called the “Lions of Teranga”), the “call to war” framing, is genuinely powerful and feels like a true reflection of the national team’s core (also, “call to war” hits different after what happened at AFCON, but that’s a conversation for another day.) The only thing that threw me off was the possible use of AI — please don’t tell me that lion was real, or I’m going to have to call PETA.

Germany’s presentation, with family members talking about players, is really striking in concept. But considering this is one of the national teams that has won the most, alongside Italy and behind Brazil, I felt it lacked something in terms of brand identification. That dream-of-playing-the-World-Cup feeling gets me every time, but the execution felt like something we’ve already seen from other teams.

Norway had a genuinely interesting one: the King delivering a message of unity and national pride to wish the team luck, with players appearing across everyday Norwegian life scenes while the country’s stunning landscapes stole the spotlight. Beautiful, but competing in a crowded field of announcements doing exactly the same thing.

Sweden: Graham Potter announcing the team in front of a board doesn’t exactly scream brand-oriented content, so I have to leave it out.

New Zealand: this one broke my heart the most. The visual language (which felt too US-influenced) seemed disconnected from a country with rich football1 culture, a strong Māori identity, and genuinely epic landscapes. The landscapes are there, but they feel borrowed to the narrative. In a squad announcement, production can elevate identity, but it can’t replace it.

#5: France

It depicts an ad format with some, but not all, of the players in different moments of their day. The remaining names appear in different objects of the scene.

I loved how naturally the players show up and how they interacted with the narrative. It lands at fifth because, though funny and engaging, there was something missing from les Bleus’ identity — it felt slightly too US-influenced in its visual approach, which is something you can actually do brilliantly (spoiler to another announcement later)2.

#4: Bosnia and Herzegovina

One of the most pleasant surprises. Simple but extremely effective: friends and family enthusiastically announcing teammates, with typical landscapes in the background. As I mentioned with Norway, Germany, and New Zealand, what makes this different isn’t the production: it’s the emotion. The names, the people, the landscapes — they feel like it holds together, as if the people belong to the place, and together they belong to the national team and its identity. Spoiler: I really want Argentina to do something like this, with local people instead of family members. Let’s see.

#3: Scotland

There’s nothing that can beat Ewan McGregor’s voice here. Of all the globally known Scottish celebrities they could have chosen, McGregor was the right call, delivering a beautifully crafted piece of storytelling that says, without quite saying it, that one of the founders of the modern game lives and breathes football. The presence of locals — the real people who, for me, are the heart of what the World Cup means — is what makes it so strong. His voice, the locals, the landscapes, the narrative: it all feels completely on point.

#2: Czech Republic

This one feels the most compelling to me, and the reason is how much it achieves with so little. Direct family members talking about their children, about their dreams, and about how those dreams began. You might say it’s similar to Germany’s, but the details make all the difference. Seeing those kids with Nedvěd’s haircut made me imagine them dreaming of being him — walking in his exact shoes. Then the video takes you into their bedrooms, their décor, their corners of the Czech Republic where those kids dared to dream. It’s about people, not production, and that’s why it works.

#1: England

A masterpiece, and one that will leave a blueprint for how to make a squad announcement video.

It opens with audio of the mildly famous musician John Lennon3 answering a question about how British he felt. Then the video begins: a man running through London in an incredible England pre-match jersey (near Victoria Station, I think, though please correct me if I’m wrong) with different frames illustrating each name as it’s announced.

There are so many layers beautifully integrated here. One that hit me particularly hard: in an era where AI is invading everything, this announcement leans completely into human art. And even if AI played a role in small details, the idea, the craft, and the human work are unmistakably there. The fact that a song made almost six decades ago can be organically woven into a chant of unity and faith for 2026 is remarkable.

And that matters more than it used to. In 2026, audiences are trained to feel the difference — we saw it with Senegal's lion, where one AI-looking frame was enough to pull me out entirely. England bet in the exact opposite direction, and it paid off.

There are also deliberate hints of US culture — strategically strong, given The Beatles’ history of conquering America. And the video leans into that fully, blending the city’s visual world with Beatles iconography throughout: the four people, each holding a letter and striking a pose from the Help! album cover to announce Harry Kane.

The Beatles are, I’d argue, the most globally recognized symbol of English identity (I’d say after the Queen and perhaps football itself, but maybe I’m wrong), and it was an excellent choice from the founders of the game.

Closing lists

A few more thoughts before I hand it over to you.

Teams I thought would have announcements videos but didn’t (yet): USA — one of the hosts and arguably the kings of cinematic production; Brazil — though they had some kind of official broadcast; Japan — I was genuinely hoping for something Captain Tsubasa-related, not going to lie.

Teams I’m most eager to see: Argentina, Spain4, Uruguay, Australia, Mexico.

Which ones are you expecting? And which ones did I get completely wrong? Let’s discuss below.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

There is a specific feeling that comes from watching something happen that shouldn’t be happening, where each goal arrives before you’ve finished absorbing the last one, and the scoreboard starts to feel like it’s lying.

I was at home the afternoon Germany beat Brazil 7-1 in Belo Horizonte, books open on the desk and the television on in the background, and somewhere around the fourth goal I stopped processing what I was watching as football at all.

Brazil was falling apart in real time, in their own country, in a World Cup semifinal, and the pace of it — the way it kept going, kept accelerating — made it feel less like a match and more like watching something happen to people who didn’t yet know they were inside history. The players on the pitch didn’t know the final score, and neither did I. Every time I was sure it couldn’t get worse, it did.

I didn’t understand it then as anything more than a football match. But I was watching Era 3 at its most concentrated.

But this era, like the previous ones, didn't arrive suddenly.

To understand how the 7-1 became the symbol it did (of a tournament that now operated as much on the internet as on the pitch) you have to go back a few years and look at what was changing in the world the World Cup was trying to inhabit.

This is Part 3 of a 5-part series on the commercial history of the FIFA World Cup. I want to understand how a sporting event became the most commercially powerful property in the world — and to do that, we need to go back to where we left off last week.

If you missed Part 2, find it here:

The Two Decisions That Rewired Football

The Premier League was founded in February 1992 with a commercial thesis that sounds obvious in retrospect but was genuinely radical at the time: top-flight English football would be sold to broadcasters as a premium product at a premium price, and the money from that sale would fund a quality of football that justified an even larger sale next time round. BSkyB paid £304 million for five years of rights — nearly five times the value of the previous deal.

Almost simultaneously, UEFA rebranded the European Cup as the Champions League from the 1992-93 season — a name chosen to evoke something global rather than merely continental, to position the competition as a stage rather than a tournament, and building on the group format introduced the previous year. The group format meant more matches, more inventory, more access points for broadcasters and commercial partners.

European club football was no longer a domestic competition with an international audience. It was a media property — one that ran every year, with the world's best players, distributed globally with production values that hadn't existed in football a decade earlier.

The Champions League didn't threaten the World Cup's primacy; nothing could do that. But it changed the conditions under which the World Cup operated, and it created a commercial grammar that the World Cup would eventually have to learn to speak.

The War for Football's Story

The club game had demonstrated something Nike understood before most: football’s commercial value was partly about the sport and largely about narrative — the story of the competition, the personality of its participants, the emotional investment of its audience. In 1996, they acted on that reading. Nike signed Brazil at a moment when Nike's global football business was still finding its footing. The Brazil shirt was the most concentrated vehicle for that narrative in the sport — and they bought the vehicle.

What followed resolved in the most structurally interesting way possible: Nike won the narrative without always winning the contract. In South Africa, Adidas was the official World Cup partner but Nike dominated the conversation anyway. The lesson was structural — in the internet era, the story you tell can be worth more than the rights you hold.

Sixty Million Co-Authors

What keeps returning to me about that afternoon is how the story of the match was assembled, not through any channel FIFA owned or controlled, but by millions of people writing it simultaneously, in real time. Germany 7-1 Brazil generated 35.6 million tweets. And Era 3 made this possible for the first time.

Era 1 transmitted the World Cup through radio and print — the story was controlled by journalists and mediated by institutions. Era 2 added television, which expanded the audience enormously but kept the storytelling architecture essentially unchanged: a small number of broadcasters, a large number of passive viewers. But now, the social media layer that matured between roughly 2006 and 2014 transformed viewers into participants in the production of meaning — people who could amplify, interpret, satirize, and reshape the tournament’s narrative in real time, and whose collective output often proved more resonant than anything the official broadcast structure produced.

“It’s Coming Home” went viral in 2018 because England fans decided it was the thing — not because any broadcaster or sponsor activated it.

And what this changed wasn’t just how stories were told: it was which stories could travel. Rivalry no longer needed geopolitical backstory to reach a global audience. The internet made emotional stakes legible in minutes, without context or history behind them.

From National Exports to Global Personal Brands

Heroes from the previous era were national exports — Pelé represented Brazil to the world, Cruyff represented the Netherlands, Maradona represented Argentina. Enormous, globally visible figures, but the frame was always national. Their identity was inseparable from the shirt they wore.

Era 3 dissolved that frame. The proof of concept was Beckham — something I’ve traced in earlier posts, but worth naming here: what Real Madrid built wasn’t just a transfer, it was the first commercial architecture explicitly reverse-engineered around a single player’s cultural visibility. A footballer, for the first time, operated as a brand capable of crossing sectors and markets independently of his team’s results. What followed scaled that model by an order of magnitude.

Players had become the primary force of storytelling in football, and the World Cup was where those stories finally got their verdict.

The Marketing Stack of Era 3: 1994–Present

Era 3 is also the era in which the World Cup became genuinely global as a competition, not just as a broadcast. The expansion to 32 teams in 1998 opened the door to confederations that had been structurally underrepresented, and the results followed. Senegal and South Korea reached the quarterfinals in 2002. Ghana reached the last eight in 2010. For the first time, all five continental confederations had meaningful stakes in the outcome of a tournament, not just a presence in it. The commercial architecture of Era 3 was built on top of that expansion — and shaped by it.

🏆 Mascots became an entertainment industry commission The 1994 edition introduced Striker, a dog designed by Warner Bros. — the first Hollywood studio commission in World Cup history, and the beginning of outsourcing mascot creation to entertainment rather than design. France 1998’s Footix generated an unexpected linguistic legacy: “footix” became French slang for “bandwagon football fan.” Germany 2006’s Goleo VI, created by Jim Henson Creature Shop, produced the most expensive mascot-related commercial failure in World Cup history when toy company NICI went into bankruptcy protection after the mascot failed to generate expected merchandise demand. Qatar 2022’s La’eeb was designed primarily for animated social-first deployment — for the first time, a World Cup mascot built backwards from the platform rather than the plush toy.

🏆 Logos evolved from static to digital-native Era 3’s logo evolution follows a single arc: from descriptive to kinetic to digital-native. From 2002 onward, the World Cup Trophy shape became a consistent element in logo design, made formally compulsory by FIFA regulation in 2014. Brazil 2014’s logo was the first designed with kinetics in mind, treating the mark as a motion element rather than a static emblem. The 2026 edition will be the first logo designed to animate by default, built for digital deployment from the ground up.

🏆 Anthems peaked and then fragmented The anthem economy of Era 3 has the shape of an inverted parabola. Ricky Martin’s “The Cup of Life” in 1998 was the first genuinely global World Cup anthem1. The 2010 edition produced two standalone cultural artifacts from a single tournament: Shakira’s “Waka Waka” alongside K’naan’s “Wavin’ Flag” for Coca-Cola. Since then, the multi-track, multi-artist strategy has diluted the cultural impact that comes from a single song becoming the sound of a summer — optimizing for market reach at the expense of the resonance that makes an anthem survive the tournament that produced it.

🏆 Jerseys stopped being about the team Argentina’s three-star post-Qatar 2022 shirt became the best-selling national kit of 2023 globally, including in markets with no connection to Argentine football — purchased as a cultural object, an aesthetic signal, an affiliation with a global narrative. The jersey now circulates on its own commercial logic, one that is not primarily about football fandom. Blokecore (the wearing of football shirts as casual streetwear, entirely divorced from match attendance or team loyalty) is the endpoint of this process, the moment when the sport itself becomes optional.

🏆 Digital infrastructure created a parallel commercial universe EA Sports’ FIFA International Soccer launched in December 1993 — before the 1994 World Cup had even begun — creating a parallel commercial ecosystem for a tournament that hadn’t yet started. The Coca-Cola and Panini digital sticker album for Qatar 2022 reached twenty-seven million users. FIFA+ launched as an OTT streaming platform during the same cycle.

The Sponsor Architecture Mutates

The ISL collapse of May 2001 is the event Era 3’s commercial structure is most directly a response to. ISL had held FIFA’s marketing rights since 1982, when Horst Dassler engineered the deal that gave his company control of the World Cup’s commercial infrastructure. When it went bankrupt, FIFA brought its marketing rights in-house through FIFA Marketing AG and began building the tiered sponsorship architecture that defines the tournament today.

The structure that emerged — Partners, World Cup Sponsors, Regional Supporters — codified something the Premier League and Champions League had already demonstrated: that exclusivity, properly managed, creates scarcity value. The 2002 Korea/Japan edition ran with fifteen partners, which the trade press described as saturation point, and it was. The structure was refined from there.

The more interesting story is who those brands were. The 2015 FIFAGate indictments triggered public pressure from major sponsors, and the 2018 Russia cycle struggled to fill all sponsorship slots as a result. What filled the gap was structurally significant: Chinese brands. Wanda, Hisense, Vivo, and Mengniu entered as Western commercial credibility was temporarily disrupted. Hyundai and Kia, who signed at Korea/Japan 2002 and have never left, represent the cleaner version of this thesis: when the competition goes genuinely global, the commercial case for brands from newly competitive regions becomes self-sustaining.

The Soft Power Turn and the Broken Spell

The World Cup’s emotional job — the thing it has always done better than any other sporting event — is create the conditions for collective belonging. For ninety minutes, and for the weeks surrounding those ninety minutes, the tournament makes national identity feel uncomplicated. No commercial infrastructure can manufacture this. It has to be felt.

Era 3 made that feeling harder to sustain. Brazil 2014 is the inflection point: the “FIFA-quality hospitals” slogan (coined by protesters) captured a political argument that no World Cup host had made so publicly before. Brazil 2014 was not the first expensive World Cup, nor the first held under a compromised political context. But it was the first where the cost was legible to the public as a political choice, and the internet ensured that argument reached a global audience simultaneously with the tournament itself.

Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 deepened this dynamic. The spell held commercially — Qatar 2022 generated $7.57 billion in revenue for FIFA, an eighteen percent increase on the prior period. But it held differently. For a growing segment of the global football audience, the suspension of disbelief the World Cup had always requested required more deliberate effort than it once did. The product kept selling but the relationship with their “customers” changed.

What Era 3 Built

Era 1 built the emotional infrastructure. Era 2 built the commercial architecture. Era 3 turned that architecture into an empire:

• A tiered global sponsorship structure built in-house, with category exclusivity creating genuine scarcity value.

• A narrative economy where the story you tell can be worth more than the rights you hold.

• Players as global personal brands, whose commercial value existed independently of the shirt they wore.

• Sixty million co-authors writing the tournament’s story in real time, producing meaning no official broadcast could replicate.

• A digital infrastructure — video games, OTT platforms, digital sticker albums — running as a parallel commercial universe alongside the sport itself.

• A jersey that stopped being about the team and started circulating on its own cultural logic.

• A genuinely global competition, where all five continents had meaningful stakes in the outcome for the first time.

The emotional layer is still there, still capable of producing what I watched at home that afternoon in June 2014. But in Era 3 it became harder to access cleanly. The internet that made the co-authorship possible also made the machinery visible. . But for the first time, the audience could see exactly what they were watching. Most kept watching. The relationship changed anyway.

In Part IV, we’ll look at what this empire looks like right now — and what the World Cup is being asked to become.

What do you think? Let’s discuss below.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

In the last post, I started talking about a photo of me at five years old wearing USA 94 gear and how that merch cemented a lifelong obsession with the World Cup’s commercial universe. The photo is where my memory starts — but the story had been running for years before. In Argentina in the 90s, certain World Cups already lived in the air around you. The ones that really lived in the air were 1978 and, mostly, 1986.

The last one was not the least relevant — if anything, the most. Yes, Argentina won the World Cup in 1986, but what cemented the mythology, and what I’m going to trace through this post, wasn’t just the final. It was a quarter-final against England, and two moments that people have never stopped arguing about: The Hand of God came first, and always has. Then the Goal of the Century.

The first could divide a room. The second never did.

By Mexico 86 and Italia 90, this era had already crested. What I grew up watching wasn’t new — it was the result of thirty years of foundational work.

This is Part 2 of a 5-part series on the commercial history of the FIFA World Cup. I want to understand how a sporting event became the most commercially powerful property in the world — and to do that, we need to go back to where we left off last week.

If you missed Part 1, find it here:

Television Changes Everything

Before television, the World Cup reached you through someone else’s words. England 1966 was the first World Cup to be commercially broadcast on television in the host country (ITV) — the numbers were still limited, sets were a relative novelty in many markets, but the model was set.

But Mexico 1970 changed the parameters entirely: the first transmitted in color via satellite, globally. In the black-and-white era, kit design had a specific functional constraint — teams needed to differentiate by contrast. Color was irrelevant because color couldn’t be transmitted.

The moment color arrived, that logic shifted. Brazil’s canary yellow, already a national symbol since 1958, became a visual event. The Netherlands’ orange. Kit identity, in the commercial sense, starts here.

But the most underrated consequence of television was what it did to spectatorship.

One more structural change arrived in 1974: The Jules Rimet Trophy — which Brazil had won permanently after their third title — was replaced by the current version. It was no longer named after its founder. It became simply the FIFA World Cup Trophy — an institutional symbol rather than a personal tribute. And the new World Cup immediately made it an image of a new era, directly linked to the figures we’ll talk about next.

Combined with the return to a stable quadrennial cycle after World War II, the tournament was now a predictable, recurring event on the global calendar. No more interruptions or ad-hoc organizing. A reliable institution — which was a precondition for a reliable commercial one.

Speaking of which: television is usually celebrated as the force that democratized the World Cup, that gave it to the world. That reading is true, and it misses something more important. Television didn’t give the World Cup to the world. It gave the World Cup to FIFA. Before broadcast rights existed, commercial value accrued locally — to the organizing committee, the host economy, the stadium. The moment a broadcaster paid to transmit it globally, that value transferred upward. FIFA held the rights.

The Birth of the Cult of Personality

To understand where football’s commercial ecosystem started, you need to understand the tension that created it. Era 1 gave us collective heroes: he Garra Charrúa, the Mighty Magyars, the Wunderteam. No single figure was bigger than the team, and no team was bigger than the tournament.

Era 2 dismantled that entirely. What Pelé, Beckenbauer, and Maradona built wasn’t just personal commercial reach — it was a cult of personality model: one figure per nation, around whom the entire emotional narrative organized itself.

But this goes beyond marketing: A cult of personality has psychological and political dimensions that a brand deal doesn’t capture.

Pelé was the template. By 1970 he was already the first global single-athlete brand whose commercial value transcended his sport, with deals with Pepsi and Puma, his image circulating globally with commercial intent in a way no non-North American athlete had achieved before. But Pelé’s power wasn’t only commercial: in Mexico 1970, he was the protagonist of the most aesthetically complete football the World Cup had ever seen. Brazil’s yellow, Pelé’s number 10, the Jogo Bonito — the first World Cup brand that didn’t know it was a brand.

Beckenbauer gave the model a European register — the libero, the captain, the embodiment of German tactical and organizational authority; proof that the template could travel.

But Diego Maradona took it somewhere else entirely: into moral complexity. The 1986 World Cup is where the cult of personality model produced its most sophisticated and enduring narrative, because Maradona gave the tournament something it hadn’t had before: a figure who was simultaneously hero and villain, depending entirely on which side of the globe you were standing on.

For Argentina, he was a god. For England, he was the man who cheated and got away with it. Both readings were legitimate, and were fueled by the same two moments: the Hand of God1 and the Goal of the Century, in that order, three minutes apart in the same match.

The political context underneath those minutes was fundamental: the match carried the weight of the war — without a word of official acknowledgment from FIFA, without any institutional narrative, just two teams on a pitch and a global television audience that understood exactly what it was watching.

The Marketing Stack of Era 2, 1966–1994

If Era 1's marketing stack was posters, radio, and print — locally controlled, fragmented, host-defined — Era 2's stack is television, mascots-as-IP, logo standardization, and the first formal merchandising infrastructure.

🏆 Television was the infrastructure everything else was built on And made everything in this era possible. The most immediate effect: a ball — the Adidas Telstar in 1970 — could now be marketed globally off the back of a broadcast. Panini partnered with FIFA that same year to launch the first World Cup sticker album, sparking a collecting obsession that has never really stopped.

🏆 Mascots became cultural and political objects Every host nation’s mascot is a controlled image of how that country wants to be seen by a global television audience. The first was World Cup Willie — a lion wearing a Union Jack kit, introduced in England 1966. Straightforward national symbolism, but the template was set. Argentina 1978’s Gauchito (a traditional gaucho child, romantic and folkloric) projected national heritage and pastoral identity to a watching world. Spain 1982’s Naranjito (a smiling orange) projected warmth and European identity at a moment of Spanish democratic transition after Franco. Italy 1990’s Ciao (a faceless tricolore stick figure in a deliberate design-school modernist aesthetic) was a signal of cultural sophistication, a country presenting itself through its design tradition rather than through a cuddly character. Mixed reception at launch, design canon reference now.

🏆 Visual identity was perfected in this era Before 1970, host countries designed their own everything, locally and independently. The 1970 Mexico logo marked a shift: FIFA’s first stripped-down design, an abstract football graphic that established the visual grammar for everything that followed. From there, it became a joint project between FIFA designers and host-country agencies. The 1974 Germany logo went further into abstraction — single color, virtually no cultural reference beyond “WM” (Weltmeisterschaft). From Argentina 1978 onward, host nation flag colors became a consistent design element, running through España 82, Mexico 86, Italia 90, and France 98. The poster tradition ran alongside it — in 1982, Joan Miró designed the Spain poster. The World Cup had become a cultural commission significant enough to attract figures from entirely outside sport.

🏆 Kit branding went from forbidden to foundational Manufacturers were prohibited from displaying logos on national team kits until 1974. The first prominent display came in 1978 — Adidas trefoil on Argentina’s shirts, visible in color on global television for the first time. The commercial logic was immediate: hundreds of millions of people watching a kit with your logo on it, for 90 minutes, across a month-long tournament. The kit deal became one of the most valuable assets in sports sponsorship from that moment forward.

The Infrastructure Gets Built

The commercial infrastructure of the modern World Cup was assembled through a combination of personal ambition, corporate strategy, and a specific alignment between FIFA’s need for revenue and one man’s vision of what sports marketing could become: Horst Dassler.

The son of Adidas founder Adi Dassler, Horst was the architect of the modern sports marketing industry in a way that is genuinely difficult to overstate. In 1978, in partnership with marketing agent Patrick Nally, he orchestrated the first formal tripartite arrangement between Coca-Cola, Adidas, and FIFA — the founding structure of what would become the global sponsorship program. The logic was simple and revolutionary: instead of ad-hoc local deals negotiated tournament by tournament, a small number of global brands would buy category-exclusive access to the World Cup across multiple editions, that guaranteed global visibility and category protection.

Post-1982, Dassler partnered with Japanese advertising giant Dentsu to create International Sport and Leisure (ISL), which aggregated, sold, and serviced FIFA’s commercial rights from 1982 until its bankruptcy in May 2001. For nearly two decades, it was the operating system of global sports commercialization2.

Politics, Soft Power, and the Precedents Set

The World Cup has never been politically neutral, as established in Part 1. Era 2 produced two precedents worth examining directly, because both have echoes that run all the way to the present.

Argentina 1978 established a precedent the tournament hasn’t stopped repeating: FIFA’s willingness to proceed with a host regardless of the political conditions surrounding it. The questions that surrounded that tournament — about the regime, about the circumstances of certain results — were never formally resolved, and FIFA’s institutional position was, as it would be again, to treat them as outside its remit.

The second precedent is commercially more specific: Mexico 1986 and the tobacco sponsor. FIFA overrode Mexico’s national tobacco advertising ban to accommodate RJ Reynolds/Camel as an official sponsor — a sovereign nation’s public health regulation set aside because it conflicted with a commercial commitment. This established a template that would resurface explicitly in Brazil 2014, when legislation was passed (the so-called “Budweiser Law”) allowing alcohol sales in stadiums despite Brazilian law prohibiting them.

The Heroes of this Era

Johan Cruyff’s 1974 remains one of the tournament’s great unresolved stories — the most complete footballer of his generation, leading arguably the most technically advanced team in World Cup history, and finishing second. Total Football’s peak expression produced no trophy, but it produced a legacy that outlasted every winner of that decade.

By 1990, the model was producing results of a different kind. Salvatore Schillaci, a Sicilian striker in only his first season at Juventus, became the World Cup’s top scorer and the emotional center of an Italia 90 that was, culturally, possibly the most complete World Cup ever staged. Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma as the BBC’s theme. Un’estate Italiana by Bennato and Nannini. A cumulative television audience of 26.7 billion by FIFA’s count.

What Era 2 Built

Era 1 built the emotional infrastructure. Era 2 built the commercial architecture on top of it.

• A formal global sponsorship program with category-exclusive partners paying meaningful money.

• A rights agency managing its entire commercial portfolio.

• Kit manufacturers competing for national team deals, with an official ball carrying embedded sponsorship value.

• A sticker album in its third decade by 1994 and mascots capable of anchoring animated television series.

• Logos designed to function as brand assets across merchandise and broadcast.

The emotional layer was also deeper, not because the stories were better than the Maracanazo, but because television had made them shared in a way print and radio never could.

The overwhelming event that exists today — the $13 billion quadrennial institution that generates more simultaneous global attention than anything else in sport — was shaped in the era between England 1966 and USA 1994. The 90s, where many of us grew up hearing the stories of 1970 and 1986, were already living in the world that era had built.

What do you think? Let’s discuss below.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

There’s a photo of me at five years old that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’m standing next to my brother, seven years older — and he’s wearing the USA 94 gear. The full kit: the t-shirt, the cap, and the bag. And I remember exactly how I felt wanting to have it too.

That tournament gave me Striker. Four years later, France 98 gave me Footix. At five, and then at nine, I wasn’t thinking about licensing deals or FIFA’s commercial strategy — I was just completely, irrationally obsessed. Not just with the football, but with the stuff: the mascots, the kits, the Happy Meal toys, the symbols. The visual universe that the World Cup built around itself every four years.

It took me a long time to understand why that obsession felt so different from regular fandom. The distinction, I think, is this: World Cup merch doesn’t function as merchandise. It functions as a materialisation of meaning — objects that carry the emotional weight of something far larger than themselves. And uniquely, it manufactures nostalgia before you’ve had the chance to feel it. The sticker, the mascot, the kit — they aren’t souvenirs of an experience you’ve already had. They’re promissory notes on one you’re still living.

But the question is: What is the meaning of the World Cup? What does it symbolize?

The reason a USA 94 kit could cement itself into my identity at age five is the same reason cited in Empire State of Mind: the World Cup is the concrete jungle where dreams are made of. Ricky Martin called it the Cup of Life, and he wasn’t being hyperbolic.

The World Cup is the ultimate goal not just of top-level athletes, but of entire nations, and its strength is built on national pride, on a century of storytelling, on a mythology so powerful it eventually surpassed the Olympic Games — an institution that had a century’s head start.

That mythology had to start somewhere, and when it did, there was no mascot, no kit deal, no global sponsor, and no television — barely even a plan.

This is Part 1 of a 5-part series on the commercial history of the FIFA World Cup. I want to understand how a sporting event became the most commercially powerful property in the world — and to do that, we need to go back to when it was nothing of the sort.

Why the World Cup Exists at All

To understand where football’s commercial ecosystem started, you need to understand the tension that created it. FIFA was founded in 1904, in Paris, by a group of European football associations that wanted something the sport — still very young at the time — didn’t yet have: international governance. For the first two decades of the 20th century, the closest thing to a global football competition was the Olympic tournament — FIFA recognized it as the unofficial world championship in 1914, and the arrangement held, until it didn’t.

The 1920s were defined by a simmering conflict between the IOC and FIFA over a single, seemingly philosophical question: can footballers be professionals? For the IOC, operating under the rigidly aristocratic ideology of amateurism, the answer was no: athletes who received payment for playing their sport were barred from the Olympic Games, and the entire moral framework of the early Olympic movement rested on the idea that sport was an end in itself, not a livelihood.

Football, especially in Europe, was moving in the exact opposite direction. The sport was professionalizing fast — clubs were paying players, leagues were formalizing — and the working-class roots of the game were fundamentally incompatible with the Olympic ideal. That tension finally broke in 1928, when Jules Rimet, then FIFA president, and Dutch administrator Carl Hirschmann — who had first floated the idea of a standalone football world championship to the FA back in 1902 — brought the proposal to the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam. Twenty-three voted in favor, five against, and football became the first sport with its own world tournament, completely outside the Olympic framework.

That structural decision matters more than it looks. From the moment the World Cup was born outside the IOC’s jurisdiction, it was free — free from the amateur ideology, free from the multi-sport format, and eventually free to build a commercial infrastructure the Olympics would take another fifty years to even begin constructing.

A Trophy Before a Brand

The first World Cup was not a global event and, truth be told, it was barely an international one.

Uruguay was awarded hosting rights for reasons that had nothing to do with television markets or infrastructure capacity: they had won Olympic gold in 1924 and 1928, and July 18, 1930 marked the centennial of their constitution. Therefore, the tournament coincided with a national celebration, and that was pitch enough.

What followed was a 13-team tournament in which only four European nations made the transatlantic journey, citing the cost and length of the trip during a global economic depression — played in a purpose-built stadium, the Estadio Centenario, that was positioned as a gift to the nation as much as a football venue. The organizing budget came largely from government support, there was no global commercial partner, and revenue came from gate receipts alone.

The trophy itself tells you everything about the era’s priorities. Created by French sculptor Abel Lafleur and made of gold-plated sterling silver on a lapis lazuli base, it depicted Nike — not the brand but the goddess of victory that inspired the US-based sports behemoth — with arms outstretched.

Having said all of this, it’s clear that the 1930 tournament was not yet a brand, but an event with an identity tied to its founders and its host, not to itself as a concept — and the commercial and symbolic transformation, the moment the World Cup became the World Cup, would take decades.

The Marketing Stack of Era 1, 1930–1966

There’s a reason I’m cutting this era at 1966 — covering it in detail in the next edition. England’s tournament is the inflection point: not because the inventor of the game hosted and won, but because it was the first World Cup to feature an official mascot (World Cup Willie) and the first to be broadcast commercially on television alongside the BBC — reaching a mass live audience across Europe for the first time. Those two facts aren’t coincidental — they signal the same shift: the tournament was beginning to understand it had an audience beyond the stadium, and that audience had commercial value.

But first, let’s look at what that first era actually looked like.

🏆Radio and graphic print were the pillars. There was no television coverage before 1954, and even then it was limited to a handful of European markets — the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland reached roughly 90,000 television sets in Germany. For most of the world, the World Cup arrived through the radio commentator’s voice and the printed page. Newspapers like Gazzetta dello Sport, L’Équipe, and Mundo Deportivo weren’t just covering the World Cup but, at the sam time, they were constructing it. The match reports, the illustrated previews, the post-game analysis: print media was where the narrative lived.

🏆Players were documented by witnesses, not cameras. The visual record of the early World Cups is largely illustrative precisely because photographic coverage was so limited — players were literally sketched by artists and illustrators working for newspapers and magazines, and these drawings were the primary way fans encountered the players they couldn’t see in person. The aesthetic of the era was shaped entirely by the constraints of the medium.

🏆The posters were the brand identity. From 1930 to 1966, each host country designed its own, and those designs were essentially the only unified visual identity each edition had. They were detailed, expressive, pictorial, and deeply local — flags, landmarks, native typography, players woven into national imagery, and the visual style tracked the aesthetic conventions of their moment. There was no global platform to standardize around, so all of them are cultural artifacts as much as promotional tools. When a printed poster distributed locally is your entire marketing reach, the image has to carry everything: where the tournament is, what it represents, why it matters.

🏆There were no mascots until Willie. World Cup Willie in 1966 was the first official mascot, and this is a milestone worth noting — though I want to go deeper on what mascots actually mean for a sporting event’s commercial and emotional architecture in a dedicated post coming soon. For now, the absence of mascots through 1962 is a marker of how narrowly the World Cup conceived of its own audience. Mascots are a product for children and families, and their introduction signals the moment an event starts thinking about intergenerational reach.

🏆Kit branding didn’t exist. Manufacturers were forbidden from displaying their logos on national team kits at the World Cup until 1974, which meant players wore shirts that were, in commercial terms, anonymous. Some brands like Adidas started to be present but none of it was visible on the pitch.

🏆Jerseys were beginning to mean something, but not as merchandise. The shift began with Brazil after 1950 — following the Maracanazo, the white home kit was abandoned and a national design competition was held, giving birth to the canary yellow with green trim. When Pelé wore it in 1958 and Brazil won their first World Cup, the shirt became something else entirely, and by 1970, on color television, it had become one of the most iconic visual assets in global sports history. But in this era, it was still a symbol, not a product.

🏆Host countries controlled everything. There was no centralized FIFA commercial operation — each organizing committee designed its own identity, sold its own local sponsorships, and managed its own ticketing. The World Cup was a federated event in every sense, host-defined and locally activated, with FIFA playing the role of sporting authority rather than brand owner. Coca-Cola first appeared at a World Cup through stadium advertising at Brazil 1950, but informally and transactionally, not as a global partner. The formal FIFA sponsorship program wouldn’t exist for another twenty-eight years.

What’s easy to miss, when you map Era 1 as a set of channels and constraints, is that those channels were operated by specific people who built the mythology without equity, without credit, and without any commercial stake in what they were constructing. The journalist filing from Montevideo in 1930, describing a match to readers who would never see footage of it. The illustrators who created a visual vocabulary from secondhand descriptions and rough prints. The radio commentators who understood, without precedent, that their job wasn’t to report on a match but to make you experience one you couldn’t attend.

The First Great Story

The 1950 World Cup produced the tournament’s first piece of genuine mythology, and it came from a loss. The Maracanazo — Uruguay’s 2-1 victory over Brazil in the deciding match, in front of what remains the largest crowd ever to attend a football match (officially 173,850 at the Maracanã, though the actual number was likely higher), represented the birth of World Cup storytelling.

Brazil had built the Maracanã specifically for the tournament. The host nation was so heavily favored that a local newspaper had already printed the headline declaring them champions before the match was played, and the Brazilian Football Federation had already commissioned a song for the victory parade. The narrative was settled — and then Alcides Ghiggia scored in the 79th minute, and almost 200,000 people fell silent.

What the Maracanazo did for the World Cup was establish its narrative grammar. This was David and Goliath, a story older than modern civilization and proof that the tournament could deliver something no script could have written — the overturning of every expectation, the humbling of the enormous by the small. It also established that the World Cup’s emotional architecture was rooted in national pride and regional rivalry, particularly between South American and European countries. The early decades of the tournament were defined by this axis: Uruguay and Argentina from one continent, Italy and Hungary from the other, with the World Cup as the stage for a confrontation that was as much geopolitical as it was sporting.

Those rivalries weren’t manufactured by a marketing department — they were real, emerging from genuine ideological and cultural differences about how football should be played, and by whom. Print media amplified them because it had to. Radio dramatized them because that was its nature.

Politics, War, and the Tournament That Had to Restart

Before we accept the founding myth of the World Cup, it’s worth asking who built it and why.

The idea that Era 1 produced purely organic, spontaneous storytelling deserves some scrutiny. The emotional foundation of the early World Cup wasn’t entirely unplanned — it was, in significant part, shaped by state actors with political objectives, and that context has been softened over decades of nostalgic retelling into something that feels more natural than it perhaps was. Uruguay 1930 was a government-funded centenary project, designed to coincide with national celebrations and built on public money. Brazil 1950 produced the Maracanã as a national infrastructure exercise before it produced a tournament. The World Cup’s mythology wasn’t purely the organic output of a sport that meant something — it was also the output of governments that needed the sport to mean something, for reasons that extended well beyond football.

The clearest proof is Italy 1934, which was not a complication in the tournament’s history but a confirmation of its essential nature. Mussolini personally intervened in the hosting rights process, funded the infrastructure, and used the event as a showcase for fascist modernism and national virility. The Azzurri won — in circumstances that left enough questions to fill several books — and the trophy was received in a ceremony laden with political symbolism. It was the first, but not the last, time a nation would use the World Cup as soft power.

Afer France 1938, again with European political tension as backdrop, the tournament simply stopped, due to World War II cancelling the 1942 and 1946 editions, and for eight years the World Cup didn’t exist — the sport continued in fragments, domestic leagues and regional competitions and friendlies between whoever was available.

When the World Cup returned in Brazil in 1950, it wasn’t the same event, since the war reshaped the world’s political map entirely. The hiatus had broken the rhythm of the competition — Germany was banned from competing due to its role in the war, several other nations declined to participate for various reasons, and England, which had spent decades refusing to enter a competition it felt was beneath its footballing authority, finally participated for the first time. In commercial terms, 1950 was a restart from near-zero: the organizing structures, the local relationships, the nascent print networks — all of it had to be rebuilt.

Heroes Without Names on Shirts

In Era 1, the World Cup’s narrative heroes were nations, not individuals.

Uruguay won the first two tournaments they entered — 1930 and 1950 — and their identity was built around collective grit, defensive organization, and a fighting spirit that was explicitly framed as an expression of national character. The Garra Charrúa — named after the indigenous Charrúa people, with “garra” meaning grit and strength (even if the literal translation is “claw”) — represented a cultural narrative deeply embedded in Uruguayan identity that print journalists amplified across the continent.

Italy’s back-to-back wins in 1934 and 1938 were built around Vittorio Pozzo’s generation. Hungary’s Mighty Magyars — Puskás, Kocsis, the core of what many historians consider the greatest international team never to win a World Cup — defined the 1954 tournament through a style so distinctive that is still discussed as a tactical rupture in football history. Austria’s Wunderteam of the early 1930s. Brazil’s emergence through 1958 and 1962, winning back-to-back behind a collective philosophy that was in many ways the exact opposite of European defensive organization. And then England in 1966 — hosts, winners, and the anchor of a tournament that would be the last of its kind before the commercial structure of the game began to shift irreversibly.

What this collective structure produced, accidentally and without strategic intent, was a tournament that had no rival for its own attention. Because no single player was large enough to own the World Cup’s narrative, the World Cup owned it — the tournament became the star, which meant FIFA became the exclusive owner of the most valuable attention unit in global sport, without ever having to compete with its own players for it.

Every other major property in this era that built around individual athletes gave commercial value to those athletes; FIFA, by constraint rather than design, retained it all. By the time the individual star system arrived — and it was coming regardless — the World Cup’s gravitational center was already too established to be pulled away from the institution. Pelé would add to the property, but he would not replace it.

These were teams, not brands built around individuals. There were star players, and Pelé appeared in 1958 as a 17-year-old and was immediately exceptional, but the hero export mechanism of this era was the match commentary and the newspaper column, not the endorsement deal, not the sponsored boot, not the post carved from a personal brand.

What Era 1 Built

It’s tempting to frame this first era as primitive — the before-times, the commercial void that would eventually be filled by television money and global sponsorship programs — but that framing misses the point entirely.

What Era 1 built was the emotional infrastructure that made everything else possible. The storytelling gave the World Cup a depth of meaning that no commercial operation could have manufactured from scratch. The tournament spent its first three and a half decades accumulating narrative capital, and by 1966, when the first mascot arrived and the first commercial broadcast deal landed, there was already something real and powerful to commercialize:

• The poster economy established that the World Cup had visual language worth protecting and developing.

• The radio broadcasts built a global audience that had never seen a match but could tell you exactly what happened.

• The regional rivalries between South America and Europe gave the competition a geopolitical dimension that transcended sport.

• And the Jules Rimet Trophy — a tribute to one man’s vision — was already acquiring the weight of collective mythology.

The unified brand, the global sponsors, the kit deals, the licensed merchandise — the apparatus that would eventually make a five-year-old in Argentina obsess over a USA 94 bag — were still decades away. But the reason that apparatus would eventually work, the reason people would pay for it and feel something about it, was already in place.

The concrete jungle where dreams are made of took thirty-six years to build its commercial foundation — it had to mean something first.

What do you think? Let’s discuss below.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

Subscribe to get it in your inbox:

Subscribe now

Few national teams in any sport occupy the space that Brazil holds in the collective imagination of football. The Seleção1 is not just a top-tier national team in the broader history of the game. Its impact reaches far beyond the pitch.

The Seleção is a brand ecosystem built across seven decades on a foundation of mythology, cultural identity, and the relentless export of a playing philosophy that transcended the sport itself.

The 1970 World Cup squad — Pelé, Jairzinho, Tostão, Gerson, Carlos Alberto — remains the most referenced team in football history. And behind all of it, a concept that would eventually become both the brand’s greatest asset and its most dangerous liability: jogo bonito.

The myth of 1970 built Brazil into the most commercially valuable national football brand on Earth, powering a Nike partnership now entering its fourth decade at approximately $100 million per year.

The Construction of the Myth

The jogo bonito philosophy and its roots are cultural, racial, and deeply political. In 1919, the Brazilian government prohibited Black and mixed-race players from representing the national team. Throughout the 1920s, exclusionary practices persisted across domestic leagues — until clubs such as Vasco da Gama and Ponte Preta began integrating their squads, demonstrating that performance trumped prejudice.

The consequences were seismic. As anthropologist Gilberto Freyre articulated2, what emerged was a distinctly Brazilian style he called futebol mulato — a unique form of play defined by improvisation, rhythm, and individual expression, rooted in the bodily art of capoeira and in direct contrast to the rigid, hierarchical European model. Football became intertwined with national identity in a way that went far beyond sport. You cannot understand Brazil without understanding how football operates inside it.

The devastating 1950 Maracanazo — Brazil’s loss to Uruguay in the World Cup final on home soil — left a wound so deep that the federation changed the team’s colors. leaving the white shirt behind. The now-iconic Canarinha (yellow shirt, green trim, blue shorts) was introduced through a national design competition, aligning the kit with the colors of the Brazilian flag.

With a visual rebrand born from trauma, then came the vindication: three World Cups in four tournaments (1958, 1962, 1970), each one reinforcing the mythology.

• The 1958 squad introduced a 17-year-old Pelé to the world.

• The 1962 squad relied on Garrincha when Pelé was injured — the two never lost a match when they played together.

• And the 1970 squad, managed by Mário Zagallo (who deployed a 4-2-4 with Jairzinho on the wing and Tostão as a false nine, concepts decades ahead of their mainstream adoption), produced what many still regard as the most beautiful football ever played.

By the time color television broadcast the 1970 final to a global audience, the brand was cemented in the collective consciousness in a way no marketing department could have engineered. This is the asset the CBF3 inherited — and it is precisely this asset that now constrains them.

The Myth Meets the Market

The commercial value of the Brazil national team brand is, by any reasonable measure, extraordinary.

In December 2024, the CBF and Nike announced a 12-year partnership extension through 2038, reported at approximately $100 million per year — with, for the first time, royalties on merchandise sales and worldwide licensing rights for the CBF. This is one of the most valuable kit deals in world football, and it was negotiated against competitive pressure from Adidas, who were seeking retaliation after losing the German federation to Nike.

The deal was not only a reflection of the brand’s current commercial power but an explicit invocation of the mythology.

CBF president Ednaldo Rodrigues framed the extension as an opportunity to “honor the jogo bonito legacy.”4

But here is where the strategy begins to fracture.

The Nike relationship — and the broader commercial portfolio including Itaú, Neoenergia, and Guaraná Antarctica — faces a structural problem that no sponsorship valuation model can easily resolve: the product on the pitch has diverged so dramatically from the brand promise that the gap is now measurable in both fan sentiment and sponsor return.

Research from Sports Value (Brazil) has shown that sponsor recognition rates for CBF partners are alarmingly low5.

• Nike itself was the most recognized brand associated with the Seleção at only 27% — a number that Sports Value argues should be at minimum 30–35% given the scale of investment.

• Guaraná Antarctica came in at 7%.

• Adidas, which does not even sponsor the team, registered 6% — the same as official sponsor Itaú.

The analysis concluded that “brands spend a lot of money and their return on the consumer’s mind is very low.”

The Product Crisis

Since winning the 2002 World Cup, Brazil has not reached a final.

• In 2014, they suffered a 7–1 defeat to Germany in the semi-final on home soil—arguably the most shocking and devastating result in the history of major international football.

• In 2018, they exited in the quarter-finals.

• In 2021, they lost the final on home soil against Argentina.

• In 2022, they were eliminated on penalties in the quarter-finals.

• In 2024, they were knocked out of the Copa América before the semi-finals, the seventh time in a row they had failed to reach that stage in a tournament played outside Brazil.

The on-field identity crisis is well documented but worth framing in product terms.

Under Tite (2016–2022), the team deliberately moved away from jogo bonito. As one analysis described it, Tite adopted a form of “fast food positional play”6 — fixing players in positions and directing the ball through predetermined zones, inspired by European tactical models, particularly the Real Madrid of Carlo Ancelotti. Tite’s initial instinct was to play with the traditional attacking fluidity of Brazilian football. He abandoned it.

Fernando Diniz attempted a correction, trying to revive something closer to jogo bonito, but his tenure was short and chaotic — he was simultaneously managing Fluminense and the national team, and was dismissed after a turbulent match against Argentina.

His successor, Dorival Júnior, arrived with a Copa do Brasil title from São Paulo but struggled to establish authority. By the Copa América, players were openly ignoring him during penalty shootout preparations. He was relieved in March 2025.

The CBF then made what many consider their most consequential modern decision: appointing Carlo Ancelotti, who took over in May 2025, becoming the first permanent foreign head coach in the history of Brazilian football. His contract runs through the 2026 World Cup, at a reported salary of approximately €10 million per season, with a €5 million bonus for winning the tournament. It is an unprecedented move — and a tacit admission that the institution could no longer fix itself from within.

The Recent Controversy

The Jordan Brand jersey controversy of 2025–2026 is the clearest illustration of how the 1970 myth constrains the CBF’s commercial evolution. In April 2025, leaked images revealed Nike planned to replace Brazil’s traditional blue away jersey with a red design featuring the Jordan Brand Jumpman logo — the first time Brazil would wear red in 106 years, and the first time a basketball-born identity would appear on a national football shirt.

The backlash operated on three levels:

• a cultural objection (CBF bylaws limit uniforms to flag colors)

• a political one (red is associated with the Workers’ Party in Brazil7), and

• an identity objection — the Jumpman was perceived not as a collaboration but as an American cultural imposition on a civilizational institution.

New CBF president Samir Xaud ordered Nike to halt production and revert to blue. The final kit, released in March 2026, retained the Jumpman but scored only 2.6 out of 5 among fans.

This incident crystallizes what we’ve been analyzing so far.

On the other hand, Argentina, under Scaloni, achieved what Brazil has not yet: adapting the myth to modern tactical demands while preserving its cultural identity. While Argentina has worked on evolving its mythology, Brazil has been paralyzed by it.

What Would a Brand Strategist Do?

Viewed through a product marketing lens, the CBF faces a classic heritage brand repositioning problem. The brand equity is real but misaligned with the current product experience and market reality. The options are limited and each carries risk.

Option A: Restore the myth. Double down on jogo bonito as both playing philosophy and brand positioning. Find coaches and players who embody the original promise. This satisfies the cultural expectation but may not produce competitive results in a tactical environment that has evolved beyond the 1970 paradigm.

Option B: Update the myth. Find a new narrative that honors the heritage while accommodating modern realities — something like “the next evolution of the beautiful game.” This is what Argentina achieved, but it requires a once-in-a-generation alignment of coach, players, and results. It cannot be manufactured by a marketing department.

Option C: Accept the tension. Treat the myth as a non-negotiable brand constraint and optimize commercial strategy within those boundaries. This means no red jerseys, no external logos, no English-language slogans. It limits revenue upside but preserves the asset.

Conclusion

In 1950, after the Maracanazo, Brazil changed its colors and deepened its commitment to the philosophy that would eventually produce three consecutive World Cup triumphs. The response to catastrophe was more identity, not less.

In 2014, after the 7–1, Brazil did the opposite. The response has been a two-decade-long retreat from identity — four coaches in two and a half years, a foreign manager for the first time in history, a kit deal that pushes basketball branding into football heritage, and an institutional structure that cycles between corruption scandals and commercial overreach.

The 1970 myth is not the problem. It is, in fact, the only asset of irreplaceable value the CBF possesses. The problem is that the institution has been unable to do what the best heritage brands eventually learn to do: evolve the product while respecting the architecture.

The 2026 World Cup, hosted across North America, will be the test.

If Ancelotti’s Brazil can find a way to play football that feels authentically Brazilian while winning matches at the highest level, the myth becomes an accelerant — and the $100 million Nike deal starts to look like a bargain.

If they cannot, the gap between brand promise and product reality will widen further, the myth will calcify into nostalgia, and the paradox will deepen.

Either way, Nike will sell the jerseys. The question is whether anyone will still feel something when they put one on.

What do you think? Let’s discuss below.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

In November 2025, a couple of tourists in Buenos Aires tried to buy tickets to the Superclásico. They couldn’t.

Not because the game was sold out or the prices were too high—although they are steep, with secondary market packages running between $345 and $2,500 USD. The real reason is a highly restrictive ticketing system that has been locked inside club memberships for years. There is no general sale, no tourist window, and no away fans (a policy implemented in the Argentine football ecosystem years ago).

At this point, you might wonder why this is relevant for modern football. The reason is that the “Superclásico” gathers thousands of fans and attracts the interest of tourists worldwide, becoming a brand in itself for football lovers. FourFourTwo magazine once called it the most important derby in the history of football. And yet, the most globally acclaimed football fixture is simultaneously the least globally accessible.

Opposite Brands, Shared History

To understand the Superclásico commercially, you have to understand that Boca Juniors and River Plate are not partners in a shared enterprise.

Boca Juniors was founded in the working-class docklands, and by staying in the neighborhood, it claimed the emotional monopoly on that identity. The club has famously resisted every proposal to leave La Bombonera, despite financial projections suggesting a new stadium would unlock massive revenue. Its brand equity—including its trademarked blue and yellow colors—is built entirely on cultural heritage and its physical tie to the port of Buenos Aires, not commercial engineering.

River Plate is the establishment counterpoint. Nicknamed Los Millonarios, they moved from the port to the affluent suburb of Belgrano, adopting a “Premium Aspirational” persona. This identity is physically embodied in their home: the Más Monumental. Backed by a $100 million international loan and a $110 million deal with Live Nation, the stadium expanded to 85,000 seats (more on that here).

Any Given Monday

More Than A Stadium

Welcome to Any Given Monday, the newsletter covering the business, politics, and culture of sport…

Read more

2 months ago · 24 likes · 14 comments · Will Colahan and Carla Bilche

It now operates with more commercial flexibility, hosting its usual rotation of national team fixtures and major international concerts alongside club matches.

If you want to deep dive into how brand equity and infrastructure differ, you can read:

The Commercial Value of Conflict

Although both are strong individual brands, when they collide, their historic rivalry and diametrically opposed identities make them even stronger.

Consider the “Old Firm” derby between Celtic and Rangers. Individually, they operate in a constrained Scottish market. Yet, combined, their rivalry generates roughly 40% of the Scottish Premiership broadcast value, acting as the sole anchor of the league’s TV contracts. Like the Old Firm, the Superclásico’s massive commercial multiplier emerges strictly from opposition, not collaboration.

To assert that the Superclásico is the “most important” match in world football relies entirely on an anthropological and cultural metric rather than a conventional, spreadsheet-driven commercial one.

Dominating the Local Market

Domestically, the “Rivalry Premium” is massive. Argentine broadcast rights are built on the “Pack Fútbol” model—a joint venture between ESPN Premium and TNT Sports. To watch, fans pay a monthly surcharge of roughly $14 USD on top of their standard cable bill. It’s a steep entry price, yet the current deal is locked in through 2031.

But even within this ecosystem, the Superclásico exists in its own commercial stratosphere. For Superclásico #266 this Sunday, April 19, the match will be uniquely simulcast across both networks. This is a move to capture every possible set of eyes in the country, cementing the match as the undisputed peak of the sporting calendar.

The league even cleared the schedule to protect this value. A few years ago, Argentina experimented with a “Rivalry Week” similar to the MLS, grouping all derbies into a single weekend. But the Superclásico is so dominant that it effectively “starved” the other matches of attention. Now, the fixture gets its own exclusive matchday, ensuring the brand isn’t diluted by local competition.

However, this is where the FourFourTwo “most important match” label hits a wall. While the passion is unparalleled, the revenue isn’t. The English Premier League generates over $16 billion per cycle through global distribution. By comparison, the Argentine Liga Profesional—distributed via niche platforms like Fanatiz and Paramount+—remains a fraction of that size.

A Global Icon with a Local Problem

The Superclásico’s “importance” is, therefore, a pure measure of raw brand equity and cultural depth. It drives irrational consumer demand locally, but lacks the international commercial infrastructure to be fully monetized globally.

To understand the Superclásico’s unique weight, we have to look at how its “exportability” compares to other global rivalries:

• El Clásico (Spain): The ultimate hyper-globalized model. Real Madrid and Barcelona took their historic political friction and built an unparalleled international infrastructure around it. By prioritizing Asian kick-off times and global marketing tours, they gained massive reach—but critics argue they’ve sacrificed a degree of authentic local hostility to become more accessible to the international consumer.

• MLS Rivalry Week: The US major league attempts to engineer rivalry value through manufactured initiatives like “Rivalry Week.” While some derbies generate strong localized engagement and admirable stadium aesthetics, many others don’t reflect the kind of historical rivalries better seen in other American sports like the NFL or the NBA.

Thanks to , , , and for engaging with this note and providing more context on how this rivalry plays out in real life!

• The Cairo Derby (Egypt): This is the closest structural equivalent. Like Boca and River, Al Ahly and Zamalek completely monopolize their domestic landscape. Al Ahly is a commercial juggernaut with 51 million social followers and $21 million in annual revenue from elite memberships. Yet, like the Superclásico, it faces a severe export problem: its soul is so tied to specific local socio-political narratives that it’s difficult to package for a Western or Asian audience.

The pattern holds everywhere: Rivalry value is highest where local identity runs deepest—and it’s hardest to export for exactly the same reason.

But going back to the topic at the beginning:

Why can’t they get in?

The tourist cannot gain entry because the product has been engineered—partially by club design, partially by socio-political necessity—to be the most exclusive, inaccessible sporting event on earth.

The Ban That Shaped the Spectacle

I previously mentioned that “no away fans” are allowed in the Superclásico, but this is actually a general measure across the league. Following a horrific, decades-long escalation of stadium violence that culminated in the tragic shooting death of Lanús supporter Javier Gerez in June 2013, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) and national security ministries enacted a comprehensive and severe restriction on away fans for all league fixtures nationwide.

Recently the AFA announced a highly publicized, controlled rollout to test the gradual return of visiting fans. However, the security apparatus of Buenos Aires City explicitly excluded high-risk capital derbies from this initial phase. (This conflict between the Argentine political landscape and football dynamics also demands its own separate post!)

Consequently, the upcoming Superclásico remains a strictly monocultural environment: 85,000 seats draped entirely in the red and white of River Plate, without a single Boca Juniors supporter permitted inside the stadium perimeter.

The ban on visiting fans was a response to tragedy, and it’s understandable. The resulting atmosphere—the deafening wall of noise, the synchronized hostility, the visual sea of a single color cascading down the steep stands—is utterly unlike any neutral, corporate, or dual-fanbase environment found in other major tournaments.

The Physics of Scarcity

Because primary ticketing for the Superclásico is entirely absorbed by the clubs’ vast, tiered membership and season-ticket hierarchies, the casual consumer is structurally and legally excluded.

River Plate utilizes a rigid pre-sale system prioritizing season ticket holders, followed by members of the “Somos River” community, before any theoretical (and virtually non-existent) general sale occurs. Boca Juniors, conversely, operates an even more exclusive system with an eight-to-twelve-year waiting list just to achieve official “socio” status to qualify for a ticket lottery.

This clearly impacts secondary market pricing: both fans of the home team and tourists are competing for access. I’ve heard of locals spending $500 to see the match in an economy where the average gross monthly wage is between $1,000 and $2,000.

For the international tourist, the only viable route into the stadium is through this secondary market, which operates largely through specialized local agencies offering premium “hospitality packages.” These packages—which conveniently bundle the match ticket with pre-game city tours, bilingual guides, transportation logistics, and security details—routinely reach astronomical multiples of the ticket’s original face value, commanding prices to nearly $800 USD per person.

The Bottom Line

FourFourTwo called this the most important match in football history. Under a global commercial lens, that claim doesn’t hold. The Superclásico lacks the broadcast architecture, the frictionless ticketing, and the international infrastructure of the Premier League or the Champions League.

But the final analysis of the Superclásico lands on a brilliant, enduring commercial paradox. The fixture’s most commercially significant feature—the sheer magnitude of its Rivalry Premium—exists precisely because it has never been designed to be commercially significant to outsiders. In the push to become accessible global brands, many historic rivalries—from Spain to England, to the United States—have traded some of their local friction for a more frictionless international appeal.

This one is different.

Anchored by a working-class club that stubbornly refuses to sell its stadium’s soul or its naming rights, and an establishment club that leverages hundreds of millions in infrastructure debt from within its own borders to dominate the continent, the Superclásico is still deciding whether it actually wants to be a global product at all.

And in that steadfast refusal to compromise its identity for the sake of international export, it retains a raw, unadulterated brand value that no amount of global commercial engineering could ever replicate or buy.

What do you think? Let’s discuss below.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

Welcome back to our series! In Edition 1, we explored how padel engineered a premium global identity and unified its professional circuit.

Today, we are looking at the real economic engine of the sport: the grassroots level. From the brutal real estate requirements to the “secret” equipment loop, here is how local clubs are turning a massive profit.

Welcome to Off-Ball Logic, the weekly newsletter where we step away from the 90 minutes on the pitch to dissect the business strategies, marketing mechanics, and economic engines that are really driving the modern sports world.

Subscribe to get it in your inbox:

Subscribe now

Club Infrastructure

Building and running amateur clubs has evolved from a local passion project into a highly optimized real estate play.

Because padel courts are incredibly compact, operators can maximize their revenue per square foot far better than with traditional tennis. A standard panoramic court with tempered glass and specialized turf usually costs between $26,000 and $32,000 for the materials alone.

Note: Based on local reports shared on TikTok, building a padel court in Argentina ranges from $25,000 to $50,000 USD—significantly less than the other regions in this table. However, local revenue is correspondingly lower due to the currency exchange rate.

The Real Estate Hustle and Its Hurdles

In markets with extreme or unpredictable weather (Northern Europe, the UK) or where the sport is aggressively marketed as a premium, year-round lifestyle activity (the USA, the Middle East), the focus is overwhelmingly on indoor facilities. In the U.S., nearly 40% of all courts are now indoors. This demand has triggered a massive commercial real estate trend: repurposing empty logistics warehouses and abandoned big-box retail stores into vibrant padel hubs.

But there is a catch. Padel has brutal structural requirements that make finding the perfect building incredibly difficult:

• Competitive play relies heavily on defensive lobs, making a minimum ceiling clearance of 26 to 30 feet an absolute non-negotiable. If ductwork or lighting gets in the way, the court is essentially useless for sanctioned play.

• The column grid in a standard warehouse must perfectly accommodate the rigid 33x66-foot footprint of a padel court. If the columns misalign, operators are left with massive amounts of non monetizable “dead space.”

• Existing concrete slabs in industrial spaces often have dips or cracks. To get the perfect, true bounce required by professional standards, operators frequently have to pay for expensive concrete leveling or total replacements.

Because finding these specific buildings is so difficult, niche real estate advisory firms such as Capricorn in the US now specialize exclusively in helping padel franchises hunt down the perfect big-box inventory nationwide.

Non-Professional Marketing: Revenue, Vibe, & Gear

The days of the exclusionary country club are fading. Modern padel clubs are cashing in on a flexible “pay-to-play” model, and the core secret to their rapid profitability is the four-player split. Operators can charge premium hourly rates for the court, but because the cost is divided by four, the per-user price remains as accessible as a standard boutique fitness class.

A well-located, professionally managed facility with four to six courts, operating 12 hours a day, can achieve 30-35% profit margins and pull in up to $1.5 million annually.

In high-demand regions like Argentina, a single, well-located court can recover its initial capital investment in as little as 10 months, while a full complex with premium amenities generally sees a return on investment (ROI) within three to five years. Incredibly, the operational break-even point usually hits at just three to five hours of rentals per court, per day.

To maximize profits, smart operators layer on secondary revenue streams: tiered monthly subscriptions, corporate team-building events, and coaching clinics. Most importantly, they monetize “dwell time.” Because padel is inherently social, players linger. Adding premium cafes and lounges transforms a simple court into a highly profitable social hub.

Lifestyle Marketing & Tourism

Retention relies entirely on this “lifestyle” vibe. Clubs market themselves as welcoming, highly aesthetic spaces on Instagram, hosting inclusive “Americano-style” tournaments where players constantly rotate partners to destroy the intimidation factor. Content marketing on platforms like Instagram and TikTok prioritizes the aesthetic and energetic vibe of the club—highlighting the stylish cafe, the post-match drinks, the high-end apparel, and the vibrant community—rather than focusing purely on technical, elite gameplay.

This lifestyle appeal has even birthed a booming padel tourism industry. Affluent players from colder climates are booking dedicated trips to Spain or the UAE just to play. Recognizing this, luxury chains like Club Med are weaponizing padel as a core asset. Compared to a massive 18-hole golf course, padel courts offer resorts a remarkably high ROI on a microscopic physical footprint.

The Equipment Goldmine

The global equipment market is a reliable indicator of the sport’s health. In 2023, the global padel sports market size was valued at approximately $342.21 million and is projected to surpass $500 million by 2032. The U.S. padel gear market alone reached approximately $10 million in 2024, with leading brands projecting hyper-growth of 70% or more in 2025.

The manufacturing industry is fiercely competitive, dominated by heritage racket sports brands leveraging their legacy R&D (Wilson, Babolat, Head, Dunlop) and specialized padel-first giants heavily entrenched in Spain and Argentina (Bullpadel, Nox, Adidas, Drop Shot).

Europe remains the undisputed leader, accounting for over 55% of the market share.

Because padel rackets lack strings, the structural face and internal foam core absorb every impact. Over time, the carbon fiber micro-fractures and the foam loses its elasticity, resulting in a “dead” racket. Active players are forced to replace their rackets every 6 to 12 months. This built-in obsolescence guarantees a continuous, highly resilient loop of recurring revenue for pro-shops and global manufacturers alike.

The Bottom Line

Padel’s journey from a Mexican backyard to a global investment powerhouse is a masterclass in modern sports business. It’s the perfect 21st-century game: easy to pick up, highly social, and perfectly suited for tight urban real estate.

At the pro level, the QSI buyout unified the tour, paving the way for massive broadcast deals and institutional capital. At the local level, amateur clubs are acting less like traditional gyms and more like highly profitable hospitality hubs.

As padel pushes into the massive US market, it faces its biggest test yet: going head-to-head with the low-cost explosion of pickleball.

I’d love to hear from you:

In the battle for North America, will padel’s premium, heavily-funded model win out over pickleball’s grassroots boom?

Let me know below!

Thank you for being part of this journey! See you next week.

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

A Note from the Author (that’s me!): To do justice to the sheer scale of the padel industry, I’ve decided to release this deep dive in two editions.

Today’s post explores the Macro side—the intentional engineering of padel’s premium identity and the high-stakes battle for the professional circuit.

Next week, we’ll look at the Micro side—the unit economics of local clubs and the “built-in” retail engine that keeps the grassroots game booming.

Hi everyone!

In just ten years, padel has gone from a regional pastime in Spain and Latin America to a global investment powerhouse. Moving from an exclusive hobby for the upper classes, it is now attracting massive funding from venture capitalists, institutional funds, and international broadcasters1.

Thanks to heavy infrastructure investments, consolidated pro tours, and its incredibly addictive gameplay, the sport is scaling faster than ever. We’re going to break down exactly how it got here: its roots, what sparked the current boom, the marketing machinery behind the pros, the business of running local clubs, and the billion-dollar equipment market2.

Welcome to Off-Ball Logic, the weekly newsletter where we step away from the 90 minutes on the pitch to dissect the business strategies, marketing mechanics, and economic engines that are really driving the modern sports world.

Subscribe to get it in your inbox:

Subscribe now

The Historical Foundations

To understand padel’s current boom, we have to look at how it started as both a high-society leisure activity and a mass-market sporting obsession.

The sport was actually born out of architectural necessity in 1969. Mexican businessman Enrique Corcuera didn’t have enough space for a tennis court at his Acapulco home, so he built a 20x10 meter court enclosed by three-meter walls to keep the ball from escaping into the neighbors’ yards. Using wooden paddles, players quickly realized the walls made the game incredibly dynamic.

In the 1970s, the sport expanded along two distinct paths, creating its primary hubs: In 1974, Prince Alfonso de Hohenlohe-Langenburg, a close friend of Corcuera, introduced padel to Spain at his luxurious Marbella Club. It quickly became a premium lifestyle brand associated with European wealth, prestige, and prominent public figures—a positioning it leverages to this day.

A year later, Argentine millionaire Julio Menditeguy brought the sport to his home country. It sparked a massive cultural phenomenon, leading to thousands of courts being built and the founding of the Argentine Padel Association (APA3) in August 1988. Although it briefly declined as a “90s fad,” this widespread participation ultimately fostered a generation of world-class players and coaches.

@ignaciomonpadel¿Papá, cómo era el pádel en los 90s? Me uno al trend con fotos de mi padre @alfonsoalvarezde en una época en la que el pádel comenzaba en España 🇪🇸. Mi padre siempre me ha hablado con nostalgia de la época de los 90: circuito Beefeater, los torneos internacionales que se disputaban en el Club de Campo y un circuito lleno de buen ambiente. Una época que sirvió para poner las bases del deporte. Algo que ahora mismo están viviendo en otros países. Espero que te guste 💙 Código de descuento en @PadelPROShop : Mon #padel #padeltime #padelvideos #padeltips

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

There are tons of TikToks about padel, but this one perfectly captures how the game was played in Spain back in the 90s (Source: ignaciomonpadel / TikTok account).

By the 1990s, the sport was ready to go global. The International Padel Federation (FIP) was formed in 1991, unifying the rules and officially adopting the name “padel4.” This era also saw massive tech upgrades: heavy wooden paddles were replaced by carbon fiber, and the invention of the glass-walled “Crystal Palace” court finally made the sport TV-ready.

The Mechanics of the Global Surge

Although padel expanded steadily over several decades, the 2020s marked a sharp global inflection point. Its rapid adoption is driven by a low barrier to entry, immediate player satisfaction, and a compelling mix of physical intensity and social interaction—factors that have positioned it as a defining post-pandemic sport.

The sport appeals across all generations and social classes. It is common to see teenagers, middle-aged professionals, and seniors sharing the same facility and competing equitably. But interestingly, mega-stars like Lionel Messi and Zlatan Ibrahimovic have aggressively adopted the sport, acting as massive, unpaid influencers.

But what makes this phenomenon extremely interesting is that padel has decisively broken free from its Spain-Argentina roots. It has saturated Europe—with Sweden and Italy leading the charge in sports training and coach development—and become a premium lifestyle asset in the Middle East, integrating world-class courts into luxury hospitality resorts, high-end residential developments, and royal compounds.

But the ultimate battleground is the United States. The United States Padel Association (USPA) reported that the U.S. market is transitioning rapidly from an “initial phase” to a robust “growth phase”: a staggering 53.5% year-over-year increase in individual membership, reaching a historic high of 2,915 registered members—an 18-fold increase since 2020.

As of Q2 2025, there are 688 operating courts across 31 states and over 112,000 players. With heavy investments pushing indoor facilities into the Northeast and Midwest, projections suggest the U.S. will hit 6,800 courts and nearly a million players by 2030. This growth is catalyzed by the expansion of premium indoor facilities in major urban corridors, overcoming the seasonal weather that initially restricted the sport to Florida and California.

The Pro Circuit Takeover

For years, the World Padel Tour (WPT) dominated the professional scene. The WPT successfully commercialized the sport across Europe and Latin America, boasting 17 global sponsors and broadcasting rights spanning 150 countries. But players were frustrated by strict exclusivity contracts and low prize money.

Sensing an opening in 2022, Qatar Sports Investments (QSI)—the sovereign wealth-backed fund famous for owning Paris Saint-Germain football club—partnered with the International Padel Federation (FIP) and the Professional Padel Association (PPA) to launch a rival global circuit called Premier Padel, offering massive payouts and player freedom. Major tournaments offered €525,000 in prize money, with the winners earning €47,300 each, compared to the approximately €18,000 awarded to a WPT Master Final winner.

After a brief legal war, QSI simply bought out the WPT in 2023. Today, there is one unified, easily digestible global tour, governed by the FIP, which started in 2024 under the Premier Padel banner. By eliminating market fragmentation, Premier Padel provides a clean, easily understandable product for global broadcasters, sponsors, and fans, mirroring the highly successful ATP/WTA model in tennis.

Media & Big Money

A unified tour made padel incredibly attractive to broadcasters and sponsors. Premier Padel inked a massive deal in February 2024 with Red Bull to stream matches globally. Under the agreement, live matches are broadcast on the free-of-charge OTT platform Red Bull TV across 130 countries, covering the critical stages from the quarter-finals through to the finals of each tournament.

By aligning with Red Bull—a brand synonymous with high-octane, youth-oriented extreme sports and innovative event production—Premier Padel is successfully shedding the sport’s “country club” image for a modern vibe. This brought in blue-chip sponsors like Qatar Airways (a $1M/year title sponsor). Visit Qatar also invested an estimated $2 million to serve as the golden sponsor of the 2024 Padel World Championship.

Beyond the main tour, private franchise leagues are attracting insane celebrity wealth. Debuting in the Madrid Arena in 2024, Europe’s Hexagon Cup operates as padel’s first World Cup for private teams, featuring franchises owned by Eva Longoria and Andy Murray competing for a €1 million purse.

Meanwhile, the North American Pro Padel League (PPL) is skyrocketing. The league features teams across major markets, including the New York Atlantics, Los Angeles Beat, Miami Padel Club, Toronto Polar Bears, San Diego Stingrays, and Cancun Waves. After a $15 million Series A funding round, PPL franchise valuations jumped from just $200,000 in 2023 to over $10 million today.

This massive jump in value proves that private equity is betting big that padel will successfully penetrate the highly lucrative North American sports broadcasting and live-event market, positioning itself to rival legacy leagues.

While billionaires and sovereign wealth funds battle for control of the pro tours and broadcast rights, the true economic engine of padel is quietly printing money at the grassroots level.

Next week, in Part 2, we are going to break down the hyper-profitable unit economics of running a local padel club, the brutal real estate hustle of building indoor courts, and the hidden ‘equipment goldmine’ that keeps the industry booming.

See you next week!

A League Two club outperforms Championship rivals in sponsorship revenue. A promoted Premier League side sells more replica shirts than clubs with decades of top-flight history. A team from Stoke-on-Trent becomes an international cult brand without spending a penny on marketing. None of these developments were possible even a few years ago, yet they are all unfolding now for very similar reasons

Celebrity partnerships in football are nothing new. But what’s being built in 2026 is strategically and structurally different from the old days of a quick photo op and a novelty shirt. Today, musicians and cultural figures are functioning as literal commercial infrastructure for clubs that otherwise have no realistic path to global brand relevance.

As we covered in our Man Utd edition, the attention economy rewards authenticity above almost everything else. The clubs that understand this are using celebrity relationships as a strategic bypass around the traditional gatekeepers of commercial football.

Here are five deals that look nothing alike—but point in exactly the same direction.

Welcome to Off-Ball Logic, the weekly newsletter where we step away from the 90 minutes on the pitch to dissect the business strategies, marketing mechanics, and economic engines that are really driving the modern sports world.

The Multiplier: Ed Sheeran and Ipswich Town

Ed Sheeran’s relationship with Ipswich Town is the most quantifiable celebrity-club partnership in modern football — which makes it the most instructive. Most celebrity deals in sport are commercially opaque. The Sheeran–Ipswich model is not.

Ed didn’t attach his name to the stadium. He integrated his own commercial machine directly into the club’s fabric: a 1.4% equity stake, front-of-shirt sponsorship tied to the Mathematics Tour, and direct creative input on the product.

The results during their Premier League return speak for themselves:

• 100,000+ replica shirts sold: A figure that rivals established top-flight clubs and is virtually unheard of for a newly promoted side.

• The lifestyle crossover: The pink third kit, designed with Sheeran’s direct input, crossed over from sports equipment into lifestyle apparel — a category shift most clubs spend years trying to engineer.1

• Commercial independence: Fueled by this massive retail success, the club announced it will move entirely away from gambling sponsors once the deal expires.2

That final point about sponsorship freedom is the most strategically significant. Because Sheeran functions as both an equity stakeholder and the club’s primary brand anchor, Ipswich now has the commercial leverage to be selective—a luxury clubs of their size almost never have. They can confidently pitch fintech, wellness, and global travel brands that would usually ignore a newly promoted side.

The secret engine behind this is incentive alignment. When a cultural icon is a genuine equity partner rather than a rented billboard, brand-building becomes mutual instead of transactional. If the club’s commercial reputation deteriorates, Sheeran’s own brand equity takes a hit. That shared risk changes the entire DNA of the relationship.

The Steamroller: Oasis and Manchester City

If Sheeran is about precision, Oasis is about scale. The 2025 reunion tour contributed an estimated £940 million to the UK economy, with roughly £55 million of economic activity per Manchester concert alone.3 We’re no longer talking about campaign ROI. That is pure macroeconomic impact, and the club positioned itself right at the center to capture the upside.

City moved early. The “Definitely City” collection—launched in collaboration with Noel Gallagher for the 2024/25 season—combined Britpop-era aesthetics with the club’s visual identity. When Liam Gallagher dedicated “D’You Know What I Mean?” to Pep Guardiola at a sold-out Heaton Park, it might have seemed like a spontaneous shoutout. But for the Man City brand, it meant a coordinated global endorsement delivered to one of the largest live audiences in British music history.

This matters for City in a specific way. The club operates in a commercial environment where its ownership structure generates constant scrutiny and a persistent “bought success” narrative. The Gallagher alignment buys something billionaires genuinely cannot purchase: cultural authenticity. It anchors the club’s global commercial ambitions to the grit and post-industrial identity of Manchester itself—ensuring that as the brand scales internationally, it remains tethered to a credible, recognizable origin.

The commercial logic here is not primarily about shirt sales. It is about narrative insulation: building a brand story thick enough that no controversy around ownership or governance can easily penetrate it.

The Legacy Anchor: Elton John and Watford

Sir Elton John—THE man himself—and his relationship with Watford spans five decades, a timeline that makes it categorically different from any other partnership discussed here. Long before celebrity ownership was a sports business trend, he literally took charge of the club, becoming Chairman in 1976 and driving their historic rise from the Fourth Division to the top flight. In 2014, the club inaugurated the Sir Elton John Stand, converting that lifelong, foundational relationship into physical permanence.4

The commercial metrics surrounding this longevity are striking:

• Championship-level financial power: The club recorded a pre-tax profit of £24.1 million in 2022/23—the highest ever reported at the Championship level.

• A massive global footprint: Despite cycling between the Championship and the Premier League, Watford remains the 16th most followed club in England, with over 5 million social media followers worldwide.

• International investor appeal: When the club launched a digital equity offering in 2024 at a massive £175 million valuation, it immediately drew thousands of retail investors from across the globe, despite inconsistent on-pitch results.5

While we can’t attribute every single one of these stats directly to Elton, his presence provides exactly what genuine long-term celebrity alignment buys: brand insulation. Watford’s global following is “sticky” in a way that purely performance-driven fanbases are not. When results are bad—and for a club cycling between divisions, they frequently are—the Elton connection provides a floor of international interest that pure football merit cannot explain.

The Elton model demonstrates a principle that applies across the sports business: a strong enough cultural identity can partially decouple a club’s commercial value from its sporting performance. For mid-market clubs that cannot guarantee consistent top-flight football, that decoupling is worth more than any single sponsorship deal.

Cultural Arbitrage: Robbie Williams and Port Vale

First, truth be told: I am a massive fan of this man. In fact, I probably only know about the city of Stoke-on-Trent and Port Vale because of Robbie himself, so I had to do a bit of research to keep this as objective as possible. Here it goes:

Port Vale operates in a completely different financial universe from every other club in this analysis. And yet, Better Man—the recent biographical musical where the record-breaking UK pop star is portrayed by a CGI primate—has given them something money cannot buy at any league level: worldwide cinematic product placement at zero marginal cost.

The movie literally opens with a young Robbie (in CGI primate form) wearing a Port Vale jersey—a single scene that instantly exposed the club to a massive international audience.

Williams assuming the role of Club President in 2024 essentially created a perpetual marketing engine—one that activates every time the film is streamed, an interview is published, or the tabloid Oasis–Williams rivalry resurfaces. None of this costs Port Vale a penny in activation spend.

This is cultural arbitrage in its purest form: using a celebrity’s existing momentum to manufacture global brand awareness for a club that, by pure football economics, has no business being known outside of England. Turning a honorary title into worldwide cinematic recognition is a massive commercial cheat code, serving as the perfect microcosm for this entire trend.

And this isn’t a recent phenomenon:

• As noted by OneValeFan, even during the height of Take That’s fame in the 90s, Robbie simply wearing the shirt caused club shop sales to skyrocket.

• When he provided the soundtrack for EA Sports’ FIFA 2000, he did it on one condition: EA had to include Port Vale in the game. They agreed, placing the lower-league side in the “Rest of World” tier alongside global powerhouses.

The Counter-Model: Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney, and Wrexham

Wrexham demands its own category—because it breaks the pattern entirely, and understanding why it works makes it the most commercially instructive case of all.

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney are not from Wrexham. They are Hollywood actors who acquired a fifth-division Welsh club for $2.5 million in 2021 and built their commercial case around a content strategy, not a lifelong biographical connection. Welcome to Wrexham—the Emmy Award-winning documentary—functions not as a direct revenue stream for the club, but as a top-of-funnel global sponsorship platform that commands Premier League-level commercial attention for a lower-league side.6

The numbers validate the model completely:

• Sponsorship revenue: £1.9 million (2022–23) → £13.2 million (2023–24). A nearly 600% increase while still in League Two, easily outperforming established Championship clubs.7

• Audience growth: X (Twitter) grew from 45,000 to over 530,000 followers, while Instagram skyrocketed from 27,000 to well over 1 million.8

• Club valuation: $2.5 million (2021) → £100 million (Oct 2024 Allyn family investment) → £350 million (Dec 2025 Apollo Sports Capital investment).9

• Global partners: Sponsors now include United Airlines, HP, and Gatorade—brands explicitly targeting a global American audience, not local Wrexham customers.10

• Sporting and commercial success: Three historic, consecutive promotions from the National League to the Championship, with projected 2025–26 revenues hitting £50 million.

So, does Wrexham disprove the authenticity thesis? Not quite. What Reynolds and McElhenney did was manufacture authenticity through documentary storytelling. They made the town of Wrexham the protagonist, and fans across the globe responded with genuine loyalty. The community roots are real; the mechanism for scaling them was just radically different.

The Wrexham model introduces a new variable: celebrity as media company. The commercial value doesn’t flow from who Reynolds and McElhenney are to Wrexham. It flows from what they built around Wrexham. That distinction matters enormously for clubs trying to replicate it—because the content infrastructure (the documentary deal, the streaming platform, the Hollywood network) is just as hard to replicate as the organic fan bond of Elton John or the Gallaghers watching from the stands as teenagers.

The Authenticity Variable

Mapping these five cases together reveals a consistent pattern. The commercial value of a celebrity partnership is not a function of fame or club reach alone. It is a function of authenticity — specifically, how credibly the celebrity can claim the club as part of their genuine identity.

A club’s brand reach through celebrity alignment is shaped by three variables:

1. on-pitch performance (results still matter as a baseline)

2. regional loyalty (the fanbase that provides commercial infrastructure)

3. the celebrity halo.

But the halo only multiplies when it’s earned. When it’s Elton John watching from the Watford stands as a five-year-old, the multiplier is exponential. When it’s a celebrity hired because they’re available, the value collapses. This is why the model is not infinitely replicable — with one important exception.

Sheeran grew up supporting Ipswich. The Gallaghers are from Burnage in Manchester. Elton is from Watford. Robbie is from Stoke-on-Trent. In each case, the commercial value flows from the authentic connection, not toward it.

Wrexham is the exception that proves the rule — and the most cautionary tale. Reynolds and McElhenney succeeded not because they manufactured a connection, but because they built something genuinely compelling around the connection.

The Bottom Line

We are watching a structural shift in how small-to-mid-market clubs approach commercial sustainability. The gambling sponsor model — reliable, lucrative, and reputationally costly — is under regulatory and cultural pressure across Europe. Celebrity and lifestyle alignment is the credible alternative, and these five clubs are its most visible proof points.

The critical distinction is between brand equity and vanity capital. The clubs building durable value in 2026 have celebrities who were fans first, or — in Wrexham’s case — owners who had the commercial infrastructure to build genuine community investment from scratch. And that second path is viable. But it requires more than a famous face and a press release. It requires either a lifelong connection or a world-class content operation. Most clubs have access to neither.

The clubs that get this right could be more commercially resilient than their peers — less exposed to the reputational risk of gambling partners, and better positioned to attract the premium brands that now define top-tier sports marketing. That is not a small advantage. In a game where commercial revenue increasingly determines squad investment, which determines results, which determines commercial revenue — it compounds.

The only question left for every other club: which of these paths is actually open to you?

What do you think? Is the celebrity model a genuine structural shift, or does it still carry the same risks as any over-reliance on a single commercial relationship? Let’s discuss below.

Thank you for being part of this.

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

Subscribe to get it in your inbox:

Subscribe now

The 2026 FIFA World Cup represents a seismic shift in the business of global sports. While past tournaments relied on traditional commercial models, 2026 was conceived from day one to be a marketing juggernaut, leveraging the immense buying power of the North American market. With a completely restructured partnership hierarchy and an unprecedented scale of investment, FIFA is laying down the future blueprint for how host cities, teams, and global brands position themselves. Spanning 104 matches across three countries, it is poised to become the most valuable commercial property football has ever seen.1

However, the current political climate has raised a lot of unanswered questions. Everyone is analyzing the situation from geopolitical, societal, and purely sporting perspectives, but I am going to tackle the marketing side.

Think of today’s breakdown as a sneak peek. I’m currently working on a deep dive for my upcoming paid edition covering the complete history of World Cup marketing—how we got here, what worked, and what failed. But before we look back, we need to tackle the massive stakes of 2026.

What We Know So Far

FIFA anticipates a record-breaking $11 billion for the 2023-2026 commercial cycle, with the 2026 tournament alone driving nearly $8.9 billion. This boom is fueled by a targeted sponsorship strategy projected to hit up to $3 billion—a massive jump from Qatar’s $1.8 billion.

Brands are leaning hard into the “Super Bowl Effect” of the tournament to tap into the highly lucrative North American market. Because so much value is concentrated here, any disruption to the event’s schedule or location would trigger multi-billion-dollar losses in media and retail.2

Global Partnership Tiers and Investment Specifics

The 2026 World Cup’s strong commercial appeal is anchored by its three-tiered global partnership structure: Tier 1 (FIFA Partners), Tier 2 (FIFA World Cup Sponsors), and Tier 3 (Regional Supporters).

Tier 1 Partners enjoy the most comprehensive rights, granting them global association across all FIFA competitions and organizational activities3. Tier 2 Sponsors hold global rights specifically for the 2026 Men’s World Cup, while Tier 3 entities focus strictly on regional markets.

By the end of 2024, FIFA had already secured about 62% of its cycle revenue budget, confirming massive market confidence in the North American host model4.

As I mentioned in my recent F1 post, sponsors are shifting away from pure product placement and focusing heavily on community impact and human connection. This is perfectly illustrated by Bank of America (the first-ever global sponsor in the banking category) and Verizon’s entry as the Official Telecommunication Services Sponsor.

The bank’s $100 million investment—the largest in its sports marketing history—signals a shift toward utilizing the World Cup as a vehicle to connect across its massive U.S. retail footprint5. Similarly, Verizon is emphasizing the critical role of state-of-the-art connectivity in modern stadium experiences, positioning the brand right at the center of the “connected fan” narrative6.

For these heavyweight partners, 2026 is not merely a branding exercise but a strategic inflection point. Ultimately, any threat of suspension or relocation would be a systemic shock to the global sports economy.

Revenue Projections and Growth Drivers

The total revenue projected for the 2026 World Cup year is nearly double that of the 2018 cycle, reflecting both the expansion in match inventory (from 64 to 104 games) and the increased premium on North American advertising and hospitality.

Ticketing and Hospitality is the most dramatically expanding sector, projected at USD 3.1 billion. This growth is fueled by using state-of-the-art NFL stadiums and On Location’s appointment as the exclusive hospitality provider, offering premium corporate packages costing thousands to tens of thousands of dollars per match. This reflects a trend toward “premiumization”, mirroring high-net-worth American sporting franchise revenue models.

How We Got Here: The Road to 2026

To truly grasp the scale of the 2026 projections, we have to look at the trajectory of the last three tournaments.

The 2014 Brazil cycle generated record-breaking revenues for the time7 and brought in about $1.4 billion in marketing rights8, though it was marked by the social protests we discussed in a previous post. Russia 2018 faced severe commercial headwinds following the 2015 FIFA scandals, causing sponsorships to dip to $1.45 billion9. Qatar 2022 delivered a massive financial recovery, pushing marketing revenue to nearly $1.8 billion, fueled by record-breaking retail and hospitality numbers10.

Now, the projected jump to $3 billion for 2026 proves that sponsors view the North American market as the ultimate catalyst for ROI.

Interestingly, while historical ROI for host nations is often negative (averaging -31% across the last three tournaments), FIFA’s commercial revenue continues to skyrocket11. To help offset the massive logistical and security costs—which run between $100 million and $200 million per location—FIFA is doing something unprecedented for 2026: allowing host cities to sell their own corporate sponsorships.

Through this new “supporters program,” local organizers can sign up to 10 companies. While brands can’t use official FIFA logos, they get exclusive city-specific marks. Cities are aggressively shopping these packages for around $5 million each, with high-demand hubs like Houston aiming to raise up to $90 million from local backers alone.

From Projections to Pitfalls

Regarding what could happen if the current political and logistical conflicts escalate, I want to evaluate the risks using the SRP Framework: looking at the commercial fallout if the tournament is Suspended, Relocated, or Postponed.

There are many ways this broader situation could play out. If you want to deep dive into the geopolitical and societal possibilities, I highly recommend checking out this excellent post by for further context:

GeoSport

Five scenarios for the FIFA World Cup

From one week to the next, the 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup seems to lurch from one problem to another…

Read more

3 months ago · 8 likes · 2 comments · GeoSport

Scenario 1: Tournament Suspension

A complete suspension of the 2026 World Cup would create a commercial vacuum unparalleled in sports history. We aren’t just talking about the immediate loss of the projected $11 billion in cycle revenue; the ripple effects would collapse quadrennial advertising cycles and erase years of brand equity.

Consider the insurance gap: FIFA held a $900 million policy for Qatar 2022 covering cancellation and postponement12. However, the financial exposure for 2026 is astronomically higher. A suspension would immediately jeopardize up to $3 billion in marketing rights and $4.8 billion in broadcasting rights —meaning any existing coverage wouldn’t even scratch the surface.

Diving into the business losses, the impact is staggering:

• Global Partners: Brands like Adidas and Nike would lose the primary vehicle for their 2026 campaigns, facing massive inventory write-downs13.

• Broadcasters: Networks like Fox and Telemundo, who paid approximately USD 1 billion for the 2018-2022 rights and a subsequent extension for 2026, would bleed hundreds of millions in committed primetime ad revenue14.

• Football Associations (FAs): With a record $727 million prize purse on the line, national federations that rely on these funds for local development could face financial ruin just from covering their organizational costs15.

Beyond the direct financial hit, the damage to brand equity would be severe. Over half of fans are more likely to buy from official sponsors during major cultural moments16. For brands investing in fan engagement, the sudden removal of this event leaves their “connected fan” strategies without a platform, potentially causing a consumer backlash as fans perceive a “betrayed” enterprise17.

Finally, there is the issue of sunken costs on a short timeline. Most brands already have their marketing campaigns in place. A sudden suspension means the millions of dollars and countless labor hours already poured into these projects would simply go down the drain, unable to be repurposed.

Subscribe now

Scenario 2: The Relocation Risk

Moving the World Cup out of North America—or even just shifting specific venues due to political or security concerns—would massively devalue the tournament. The entire commercial strategy for 2026 is inherently U.S.-centric, built specifically to unlock the world’s most lucrative sports market.

As mentioned earlier, the biggest winners of the North American bid were broadcasters like Fox and Telemundo, who banked on airing 40 primetime matches. In our era of fragmented streaming, live primetime sports are invaluable18. If the tournament shifts to a European or Middle Eastern time zone, those 40 primetime slots drop to near zero for the U.S. market19. Broadcasters would face a catastrophic drop in ad rates, as morning matches simply can’t command “Super Bowl-style” premiums. Furthermore, a time zone shift kills the “second-screen” social engagement that drives digital ROI for the 43% of fans planning to stream the games20.

At the local level, the Host City Supporters program relies entirely on matches actually happening in those specific markets. If games are forced out of hubs like Atlanta or Dallas, local sponsors lose clear value, triggering a nightmare of refunds and broken contracts for tickets, parking, and hospitality21.

This threat is very real. As of early 2026, U.S. host cities are facing a collective shortfall of up to $625 million in promised federal security aid, stalled by Congressional disputes. Cities like Foxborough are threatening to withhold stadium licenses without this funding22, while Miami and New Jersey might cancel sponsor-heavy fan festivals —a key activation point for sponsors like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s— altogether23.

A relocation under these circumstances would be seen as a failure of the “U.S. major event playbook,” undermining the credibility of the United States as a host for future events like the 2028 Olympics24.

Scenario 3: Postponement Disruption

A postponement of the 2026 World Cup would wreck the meticulously planned retail and advertising cycles of global brands. For the sportswear giants, the World Cup kit cycle is a multi-year process peaking right before June.

Moving the event to a different season (e.g., winter) would leave retailers with massive dead inventory, as “summer lifestyle” apparel loses its relevance. It would also extend the expensive anti-counterfeiting enforcement window, inflating costs and eroding original marketing narratives.

Then there is the calendar clash. The June-July summer window is a traditionally “quiet” period in North American sports, dominated only by MLB. This gives the World Cup a dominant “share of voice.” Postponing to later in the year forces the tournament into direct competition with the NFL, NBA, and NHL. This means higher ad costs and lower viewership as the “multiscreen viewer” is forced to choose between the World Cup and massive domestic leagues. E-commerce would also take a hit, as the projected $100+ per-consumer summer spending bump would get lost in the crowded holiday shopping season25.

The Legal Fallout

While I’m not a sports lawyer (and I highly recommend checking out ’s Substack to dive deeper into FIFA regulations!), it is clear that the financial fallout of any suspension or relocation would trigger massive legal battles over “force majeure” (unforeseen, unavoidable circumstances) clauses. Proving that a contract is truly “impossible” to fulfill is highly litigious. Ultimately, if an event is canceled and organizers are forced to reimburse sponsors, FIFA could face multi-billion-dollar liabilities that severely threaten its $3.9 billion cash reserves26.

The Bottom Line:

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is poised to be the most lucrative sporting event in history, but its massive scale creates unique vulnerabilities. Sponsors’ $3 billion investment relies entirely on a stable, summer-based, primetime North American tournament.

The potential for suspension, relocation, or postponement represents not just a loss of revenue, but a catastrophic disruption of global marketing lifecycles, local municipal budgets, and long-term brand equity.

To summarize the primary risks:

• Systemic Financial Shock: A suspension would jeopardize USD 11 billion in cycle revenue, far exceeding the existing insurance covers of approximately USD 900 million.

• Devaluation of U.S. Market Entry: Relocating kills the primetime broadcast advantage and local host city deals, devaluing the “American Dream” of soccer commercialization.

• Retail and Seasonal Disruption: Postponement would displace a projected multibillion-dollar summer surge in consumer spending and disrupt the product lifecycles of sportswear and electronics giants.

• Reputational Fragility: Any perceived betrayal of the fans—whether through exorbitant pricing or political chaos—erodes the brand equity of sponsors who invested heavily in human connection.

The 2026 World Cup is the ultimate stress test for the modern “mega-event” model. Success requires not only commercial access but also a resilient commitment to the World Cup’s enduring authenticity and cultural relevance. If the tournament loses its soul to corporate interests—or gets derailed by logistical failures—the financial and reputational fallout will echo for decades.

The stakes have never been higher. The only question left is: how much risk are these mega-brands actually taking on?

What’s your take? Is the 2026 World Cup simply too big to fail, or are we staring down the barrel of a multi-billion-dollar logistical nightmare? Let’s discuss in the comments below!

Leave a comment

Quick heads-up: I’m officially on vacation for the rest of the week! ⛰️

What to expect on schedule:

• This post (check ✅)

• “Marketing Paradox of the Day” on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

• “Sunday Recommendations” (coming shortly)

• Notes linked to this post

What I’m taking a break from:

• Quoting, restacking, or commenting on posts/notes

• Commenting on recent news

• Dropping news or updates in threads

(Please note: Because I’m away, there will be a delay in my replies to your comments and messages! Thanks for your patience.)

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

In late 2024, LVMH (the parent company of Louis Vuitton, Moët & Chandon, and TAG Heuer) announced a 10-year, $1.5 billion partnership with Formula 11. The deal displaced Rolex, a brand so synonymous with the sport that it had become indivisible.

According to LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault:

“The quest for excellence and the passion for innovation are at the heart of the activity of our Maisons and Formula 1.”

Top-tier brands have shifted their F1 strategy: they are no longer just chasing reach—they are effectively acquiring an identity. And speaking of acquisitions: since Liberty Media took over in 2017, total sponsorship across F1 has grown to $2.5 billion annually, with projections exceeding $3 billion by 20262. The global fanbase has ballooned to 826.5 million people, 43% of whom are under 353.

What was once Bernie Ecclestone’s fiefdom — run, in his own words, for “the 70-year-old guy who’s got plenty of cash” — is now a platform where KitKat is the official chocolate bar, LEGO makes the race trophies, and McLaren rotates digital sponsor logos on cockpit screens in real time4.

The announcement of Avature’s partnership with Alpine5 sparked a fresh perspective on a topic I’ve followed for a while. Having spent nearly six years at Avature, I saw firsthand the incredible excitement this created among my former colleagues6. It got me thinking: what is the real impact behind partnerships like these?

This is the story of how that transformation happened, and what it actually means for the brands involved.

From Gold Leaf to The Golden Era

The origin of F1 commercial liveries is precise to a single race. On January 1, 1968, Colin Chapman’s Lotus appeared in the red and gold of Imperial Tobacco’s Gold Leaf brand — a deal reportedly worth £85,000 per year7. Chapman had been to Indianapolis, seen American open-wheel cars plastered with sponsors, and recognized that British Racing Green couldn’t pay the bills.

It “caused an uproar amongst the staid fans and journalists of the era,” according to contemporary accounts.

The other team principals immediately understood the logic.

What followed was three decades of tobacco dominance. At peak, some teams derived over 80% of their budget from a single tobacco deal8. The estimated total value of tobacco sponsorship in F1 runs to $4.5 billion over the full era.

Then the EU’s 2005 advertising ban triggered an immediate shock: overall F1 sponsorship income dropped by roughly $200 million in the year following full implementation9. Telecom and finance brands — Vodafone with McLaren, ING with Renault — filled some of the void, but the sport entered something close to a commercial identity crisis.

When Liberty Media arrived, it inherited a sport with no formal marketing department, no coherent digital strategy, and a chief executive who had publicly dismissed young audiences10. What it did next is one of the more instructive turnaround stories in modern sports business.

How Liberty Media Rewired the Commercial Engine

F1 revenue grew from approximately $1.5 billion in 2016 to $3.87 billion in 2025 — a 160% increase11. Sponsorship now accounts for 21.7% of primary revenue, exceeding 20% for the first time under Liberty’s ownership12.

At the team level, $2.04 billion flowed across 340 deals involving 319 different brands in 2024 alone13.

Three levers drove this:

#1: Drive to Survive:

1. Season 7 attracted 10.4 million Netflix views14.

2. Nielsen data shows 25% of all surveyed fans became F1 followers after watching it, and 30% of U.S. fans cited it as a “major reason” for their fandom15.

3. The show’s demographic profile is exactly what brands pay for: 46% of new fans under 34, 69% earning over $100,000.

Want to dive deeper? Check this out:

#2: U.S. Expansion: Viewership per race grew from 547,000 in 2018 to 1.3 million. ESPN’s broadcast rights fee jumped from $5M to an estimated $75–90M annually. U.S.-based companies now represent 46.8% of all F1 partners.

#3: Social Media: Before Liberty: 18 million followers. Now: 97 million.

The result is a sport that, by every commercial metric, no longer resembles what it was a decade ago. And this has directly changed who is spending money on it, and why.

What Sponsors Actually Pay

F1 sponsorship operates across a pricing structure that reflects team performance, placement visibility, and — increasingly — the technical depth of the partnership.

Title sponsorships at the top teams run $60–70M+ per year. But, for example, Oracle’s deal with Red Bull is reported at roughly $300 million over five years. The average F1 deal is now valued at over $6 million — roughly eight times the average NFL deal.16

Here’s where it gets interesting. Academic research calculated that sponsors gained roughly $822,157 in advertising value equivalency per World Constructors’ Championship point scored by their team. A race win amplified exposure by over $25.8 million.

Yet the same methodology found that, measured purely on broadcast exposure, only 10.1% of sponsors achieved a positive ROI where airtime value equaled or exceeded the price paid17.

Subscribe now

For the vast majority of F1 sponsors, broadcast exposure is not the primary objective. The real value lives in B2B hospitality (where multimillion-dollar contracts close in paddock suites), technical partnerships that create genuine operational value, content rights, and — most importantly — the halo effect on brand perception.

The downstream numbers support this.

• Airwallex reported a 58% jump in consumer trust post-sponsorship.

• Coinbase saw 32% valuation growth after its Aston Martin deal.

• And 1 in 3 F1 fans report being more likely to purchase from a sponsor brand, rising to 39% among Gen Z respondents18.

These are clear examples of brand equity movements.

The Livery as Strategic Narrative

The most significant development in modern F1 sponsorship is not the money — it’s the elevation of the livery itself from a logo placement surface to an integrated brand storytelling medium.

• McLaren’s 2024 Monaco Grand Prix provides the benchmark. In partnership with OKX, the team ran a one-off livery honoring Ayrton Senna in his iconic helmet colors. The results: 470 million impressions, 36 million engagements, and 180 million video views.19 The campaign was timed to coincide with OKX’s launch in the Brazilian market. The strategy was more than mere nostalgia; it was, in essence, a market entry mechanism skillfully veiled in emotional storytelling.

• Ferrari’s approach offers a useful contrast. The Scuderia has never fully surrendered its cars to a sponsorship livery — unique among constructors. When HP became title sponsor in 2024, they created a blue-accented livery for Miami but refused to go fully blue. The electric blue HP logo on the traditional red chassis was not an accident; it was the product. The visual friction generated constant social media discourse, which was precisely the point. HP secured instantaneous top-of-mind recall in a consumer category — laptops, printers, enterprise tech — where differentiation is extremely difficult.

• Google Chrome’s McLaren integration illustrates a third model: visual harmony as competitive advantage. The Chrome logo’s multicolor design maps naturally onto McLaren’s papaya palette. Associate-level placement, outsized impact. It demonstrates what branding analysts call “brand color memory” — the most effective F1 partnerships don’t fight a team’s identity. They extend it20.

Four Different Games

It’s worth separating F1’s sponsor ecosystem into distinct categories, because they are playing fundamentally different commercial games.

• Technology brands — now the dominant sponsorship category with over $565 million in annual commitments, are leveraging their presence for more than just visibility. They are seeking an operational proving ground, ideally associated with luxury-enterprise clientele.

This is demonstrated by the nature of their involvement: Oracle supplies Red Bull with cloud infrastructure for optimizing pit stop strategies, Microsoft Azure processes data from the 400+ sensors on each Mercedes car, and Lenovo installs up to 60 kilometers of fiber optic cable during a race weekend.

Observing these brands perform reliably under the extreme pressure of a race weekend directly triggers procurement confidence for CTOs—an effect far stronger than any traditional enterprise software marketing campaign. Consequently, IT sponsors have seen their share of F1 sponsorship spend jump significantly, rising from 3% in 2019 to 20% in 2024.

• Luxury brands are buying cultural positioning. The LVMH deal is the clearest statement: TAG Heuer CEO Antoine Pin reported that since becoming Official Timekeeper in 2025, “traffic is up double digits in the stores.21” The sport’s growing female demographic (now approximately 40% of the fanbase, accounting for three in four new fans) makes this even more commercially attractive for luxury houses that have historically struggled to build sports credibility.

• Crypto and fintech brands treat F1 as a regulatory workaround as much as a marketing channel. The sport offers global broadcast reach that bypasses the platform restrictions crypto brands face on Google, Meta, and Apple’s App Store. Coinbase’s Aston Martin deal — the first paid entirely in USDC stablecoin — was as much a product demonstration as a sponsorship22.

• Consumer lifestyle brands represent the newest wave and perhaps the most telling signal of where the sport has arrived. KitKat, McDonald’s, PepsiCo, LEGO, and Disney all entered F1 partnerships in 2025. Expensify’s product placement in the Brad Pitt F1 film, which grossed over $550 million globally, generated a compounding effect that its CFO described simply: “We have 20 companies right now promoting our logo. Heineken’s running a spot we’re in, and we’ve never spoken to them.”23

The One-Off Livery

With 24 races across nine months, teams face a structural challenge: how do you stay visually interesting across a calendar longer than any major football season? The answer the sport has arrived at is the strategic one-off livery — temporary designs for a single race weekend that generate artificial scarcity, media spikes, and merchandise demand.

Share

The OKX–Senna Monaco livery sets the standard. Yet, strategies vary. Ferrari leveraged Miami 2025’s blue livery to launch HP as title partner, dominating media. Red Bull’s annual white Honda tribute in Japan, inspired by the 1965 RA272, makes Suzuka an emotional brand ritual. Every detail—the red sun nosecone, retro logos, Yuki Tsunoda—is precisely chosen for its audience impact.

Las Vegas, however, is where the one-off strategy reaches its fullest expression. Liberty Media describes it openly as a “test bed” for creative boundaries that would be unwelcome at traditional circuits. In 2025, the entire grid committed to bespoke liveries, each speaking to a different commercial target24.

The financial return is not only in impressions. The inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix in 2023 was directly responsible for Liberty Media’s Q4 revenue surging to $297 million25. To convert the momentum generated by special liveries into physical revenue, Formula 1 established the “F1 Hub” at The Venetian Resort: exclusive merchandise collaborations with LEGO, Disney, Malbon Golf, BAPE, the Vegas Golden Knights, and Hello Kitty26. The logic is clean: A one-off livery creates the moment; the F1 Hub converts it into a transaction.

The Fan Economy

Commercial value ultimately depends on whether fans translate visual exposure into behavior. The data suggests they do, at rates that outperform most other sports platforms.

A 2025 Global Fan Survey of over 100,000 respondents found that 76% of F1 fans say sponsorship contributes positively to the sport experience27. Sponsoring a team is nearly three times more effective for brand-building than sponsoring the sport, as brands on cars and merchandise are more memorable.

This is commercially significant due to a demographic shift: average fan age dropped from 36 to 32 (2017-2021); women are 40% of the fanbase and three in four new fans, with half of Gen Z respondents being female. As Josh Dougherty noted, “Formula One is the brandiest of brand sports.”28 But fans are increasingly engaging beyond viewing—buying merchandise, researching sponsors, and building lasting loyalty.

The Future of The Livery

Perhaps the most forward-looking development is McLaren’s deployment of real-time digital branding panels on the car, in partnership with British startup Seamless Digital. Lightweight screens fitted along the cockpit allow sponsor logos to change during a broadcast.

The displays weigh less than 100 grams. Helmet-mounted versions weigh 18 grams. Onboard cameras — where the panels are most visible — account for approximately 20% of total sponsor media value29.

The commercial implication is significant. A team can display a European sponsor during one broadcast window and instantly switch to an Asian partner when the global feed shifts. Contextual branding becomes possible: a champagne brand appearing at the podium, a betting partner during safety car periods.

For teams operating under a $135 million cost cap, this technology means new revenue streams from the same square footage30. For brands, it means more inventory, more personalization, and more measurable engagement.

As F1 heads into sweeping 2026 technical regulations — lighter cars, higher electrical content, sustainable fuels — dynamic branding is the logical commercial complement: the physical livery becomes a canvas for an infinitely more flexible digital layer.

Conclusion

The reality of F1 in 2026 is exactly what Liberty Media envisioned: a global entertainment powerhouse that just happens to involve racing cars. With $14.2 billion in future revenue and a 275% jump in value since 2017, the debate over whether F1 sponsorship “works” is over. Now, the real question for brand strategists is whether they have the vision to do more than just slap a logo on carbon fiber.

The brands truly winning—like Oracle, HP, and LVMH—aren’t just sponsoring a series. They are building narratives at full throttle for an audience that actually welcomes their presence. In modern marketing, that kind of fan connection is incredibly rare.

The grid is full. The only question left is: which seat is actually worth the price tag?

What’s your take? Are we reaching a “sponsorship bubble,” or is F1 just getting started as a marketing titan? Let’s discuss below.

Leave a comment

There are some fantastic articles I’ve used as sources or that dive deeper into what I’ve covered today—I highly recommend checking them out:

1. Champagne, Cigarettes, and Control: The British Roots of F1’s Love of Spectacle by and .

2. From Marlboro to Moët by .

3. F1’s $2 Billion Power Play: How Formula 1 Became the Pinnacle of Sponsorship ROI by .

4. The rise of ‘Nostalgia-branding’ in Formula 1 by and .

Quick heads up: I’ll be on vacation next week! I already have a post in the works and some planning notes ready, but I might be a little slow to reply to comments.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

Subscribe to get it in your inbox:

Today we’re talking about a hot topic that has dominated international football over the past few weeks. Recent comments by Manchester United chairman Sir Jim Ratcliffe have sparked a firestorm everywhere, from 10 Downing Street to the club’s own fan base.

Although the FA considers that this shouldn’t result in a punishment, this post is about the potential consequences. Before we start, I’m not going to dive deep into the social or political implications this might have, nor how it relates to Sir Jim’s management of Man Utd or his role at INEOS. There are already some amazing articles on those subjects, and I highly recommend checking them out:

1. The Staggering Hypocrisy of “Sir” Jim Ratcliffe by

2. Is Jim Ratcliffe right about the claims made at the interview? by

3. The Coloniser’s Lament by

My goal is to offer a different perspective by analyzing how Manchester United successfully established a premier brand within an emerging market, effectively identifying a definitive Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Furthermore, I want to examine the critical risks involved when a brand’s external public image begins to erode its foundational identity.

To be honest, this resonated with me personally. As a 14-year-old girl in Argentina, the Premier League was my first and only connection to football. Don’t get me wrong (I’ve been into football since I was little) but back in the early 2000s, football in Argentina was almost exclusively a man’s world. So, the PL and Man Utd specifically became my “football island” and my introduction to fandom.

Furthermore, and given my experience across various industries and my background in managing relationships with major stakeholders, I found it surprising that a businessman leading a club with such a diverse global reach and brand heritage would make these specific public declarations.

How Man Utd Became a Global Brand

To tell this story, I want to split it into two parts. First, we’ll look at how Manchester United evolved from a regional team into a leading global brand—a journey that peaked with Malcolm Glazer’s 2005 takeover. We will cover the second part (the post-Glazer era) afterward.

This early success came from balancing excellence on the pitch with aggressive, marketing-led management off it. While the club’s journey spans nearly 100 years, the club navigated massive shifts from the 80s onward1:

• Globalization: Football benefited from satellite TV and the internet, allowing clubs to reach huge international audiences.

• The Birth of the EPL & the Bosman Ruling: The 1992 creation of the Premier League and the 1995 Bosman Ruling (which allowed a player to leave a club on a free transfer as soon as his contract expired) created intense competition for talent. Players became central to the brand’s global appeal—more on that later.

• New Income Streams: To offset rising costs, the club aggressively pursued new revenue. They expanded Old Trafford to nearly 76,000 seats and added executive suites, a museum, and a megastore. They also secured record-breaking sponsorships (like Vodafone, AIG, and Nike) and launched their own TV network, MUTV.

Dissecting Man Utd’s Brand Identity

Using Aaker’s Brand Identity Model, researchers categorize United’s strengths into four attributes2:

1. The Brand as Product: The club benefits from the simple, action-packed nature of football and the high quality of the EPL. It also has a “country of origin” advantage, as Britain is seen as the home of football.

2. The Brand as Organization: Defined by traditional values, like developing homegrown youth talent, mixed with the acquisition of global stars to maintain an exciting, cosmopolitan style of play.

3. The Brand as Person: The brand feels “youthful” and “exciting.” The club uses charismatic icons whose star power boosts the corporate image and grabs global media attention.

4. The Brand as Symbol: Visuals like the crest, the red shirts, the “Red Devils” nickname, and the “Theatre of Dreams” (Old Trafford) resonate globally.

This strategy kept Man Utd at the top of the Deloitte Football Money League for years. You can see more on that evolution here:

Harry Angelos

How Commercial Decisions are shaping Football Revenue

Football Revenue Rankings…

Read more

4 months ago · 7 likes · 2 comments · Harry Angelos

While winning is a prerequisite, the real differentiator was a proactive commercial strategy that turned passive fans into paying customers through global partnerships.

A critical takeaway is the club’s ability to maintain its core local identity—rooted in a working-class city and the development of local youth players—while simultaneously building a cosmopolitan roster of global superstars to appeal to international markets, and incorporating technology.

The ICP and How It Evolves

Definition: In a business context, an ICP is a categorical description of the type of customer who derives the most value from your product and, in turn, provides the most significant lifetime value to your brand. It’s the “perfect” customer that your marketing engine is built to serve.

Regarding Man Utd, the club has a strong following among3:

• Local Fans: Die-hard supporters in Manchester who attend matches.

• International Fans: Millions of followers in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

• Young Fans: Reached through social media and youth programs.

• Families: Targeted through family-friendly matchday experiences.

• Corporate Clients: Businesses looking for hospitality and sponsorships.

What truly cemented Man Utd’s place within these diverse ICP segments was a unique blend of brand attributes that resonated far beyond the pitch. By anchoring the identity in loyalty, a storied history, and the grit of Manchester’s local culture, the club created a visceral sense of belonging. The “Manchester United way”—which combines the development of homegrown youth with the acquisition of international legends—allowed fans in both the Stretford End and Southeast Asia to feel like stakeholders in a shared legacy. It transformed a global brand into a personal identity.

According to YouGov4, Manchester United is among the top three most popular clubs in 47 markets, bested only by Liverpool (49 markets). They are the most popular PL club in the US (26% of sports fans support the team), Canada (36%), China (30%), India (38%), and Japan (32%). These might not all be “die-hard” fans, but they are consumers who identify with the brand.

The Role of the Players

Players are essentially heroes and inspirations. For a lot of people that are passionate about this sport, these players are like heroes, an inspiration to be followed. In July 2005, United signed South Korean player Park Ji-sung. This was a brilliant move: he was a talented player for Sir Alex Ferguson, but he was also a key marketing “bridge” to Asia. Even after retiring in 2014, he became a club ambassador in Asia5.

Share

The team’s global popularity is built on a diverse roster of stars—from Park Ji-sung to icons like David Beckham, George Best, and Cristiano Ronaldo. Summer tours in the US, Australia, and Asia further strengthen this brand connection.

Maintaining Leadership Through Change

To stay relevant after the Glazer buyout and through the modernization of the 2000s, the club uses a sophisticated marketing mix6:

• Product: Beyond the team, this includes jerseys and lifestyle gear. The iconic red jersey serves as a primary symbol of loyalty and belonging for an estimated 1.1 billion fans worldwide.

• Pricing: They use premium pricing for season tickets but offer tiered pricing for merchandise so fans of all backgrounds can participate.

• Global Outreach: Distribution is no longer limited to Old Trafford. The club utilizes a “think local, act global” approach, using pre-season tours in markets like the US, China, and Southeast Asia to bring the brand directly to international supporters.

• Innovation: Promotion is driven by exclusivity and intimacy. This is achieved through dedicated platforms like MUTV and the Man Utd app, which provide behind-the-scenes content and player interactions that foster a sense of community.

These activities help Man Utd in keeping its presence globally. Additionally, the club has invested in localized content for different regions. For example, during the Lunar New Year, the club often shares special content celebrating the holiday, which not only honors their Asian fanbase but also strengthens their connection to the culture.

In a nutshell, combining tradition with innovation is how they stay on top.

How Brand Value Translates to Revenue

The club’s financial dominance directly influences three major streams (based on 2014-2025 data)7:

• Commercial (50%): Sponsorships (Adidas, Snapdragon, etc.) and merchandising.

• Broadcasting (26%): EPL and recent Europa League rights.

• Matchday (24%): Tickets and the megastore.

A key differentiator for United is its regional sponsorship policy. Rather than selling rights to a single global partner, the club sells territory-specific deals (e.g., official partners in Asia). This maximizes revenue without diluting the brand, as these partners market the club aggressively within their own regions.

Why Words Matter

Despite this success, the brand faces headwinds in 2026:

• Debt: Critics continue to highlight the burden of record-breaking debt, which has now spiraled past £749 million ($1 billion). While the original leveraged buyout debt remains, heavy borrowing to fund squad rebuilding and bridge the gap from missing European football has pushed the club's liabilities to their highest levels since 2005. This financial pressure raises critical questions about the club’s ability to self-fund the proposed £2 billion stadium regeneration without further external investment8.

• Identity: There are growing concerns among fans regarding “identity sustainability” as the club relies on the legacy of past icons like Giggs and Scholes while navigating a modern era where on-field performance has fluctuated9.

• Lack of on-pitch success: Beyond the immediate loss in European broadcast revenue, the club faces a long-term erosion of brand perception that even record-breaking commercial deals cannot fully offset.

So, how do Sir Jim’s words affect things? The club is already in a tough spot, having slid four places to 8th in the Deloitte Money League, as the club reported total revenue of €793m for 2024/25 compared to €771m the prior year 10.

While commercial revenue is up, broadcast revenue dropped due to poor results. While the club reported a combined increase of €75m through matchday and commercial revenues, there was a year-on-year decrease of €52m in broadcast revenue due to on-pitch results.

Increased globalization and the professionalization of clubs in other European leagues mean they can now compete in the same regions where Man Utd was once dominant. Local players are now spread across more clubs; for example, if we look at the trajectory since Park Ji-sung, the landscape has shifted. Today’s top South Korean talent isn't just following a single path to one “mega-club”; they are making their mark across different leagues and cultures. Last but not least, African and Asian leagues are growing considerably and establishing their own brand presence.

Dissecting Sir Jim’s words and how they alienate a key business asset

According to ONS and OECD data for 2024 and 202511, the leading countries for long-term international migration to the UK include India, which remains the undisputed leader. Nigeria and the Philippines follow as vital pillars of the British social fabric. This architecture is rounded out by Pakistan and China.

As seen in YouGov (where in China and India the Red Devils are the most chosen club in the PL), we also have traffic data, where, according to searches — and close behind the UK (10.5% of traffic)—, are India and Indonesia, which both contribute 10.1% of the team’s total web search traffic. Other significant interest comes from Nigeria (8.2%), South Africa (6.9%), and the USA (4%)12.

If India, Nigeria, and China are the backbone of international interest, and these are the same regions where United is most popular, and these are also part of the main volume of migration — the object of Ratcliffe’s words, the question remains: If the “top man” at the club uses polarizing language regarding these demographics, is he jeopardizing years of global brand-building?

How can this affect the overall picture?

While these comments may not alienate the core fan base overnight—the bond of legacy and loyalty is too resilient for a single news cycle to break—it does signal a shift in the wrong direction. In sports marketing, the sense of belonging is the primary driver of value.

It is concerning when high-level leadership risks the inclusivity of a global brand by leaning into polarizing rhetoric. This creates a precedent that could eventually unsettle everyone from commercial stakeholders to future investors. In an era where the “Ideal Customer” is global, a brand’s language cannot afford to be exclusionary.

Leave a comment

Sir Jim is betting that the “Red Devil” legacy is stronger than any press cycle. But in a 2026 market where fans have more choices than ever, is that a gamble worth taking?

What do you think? Is the brand moat shrinking, or is the sense of belonging too deep to break? Let’s discuss below.

Thank you for being part of this.

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

In the history of North American football, two signings represent tectonic shifts. The first, David Beckham to the LA Galaxy (2007), was a stabilization mechanism—a proof of concept that provided a precarious league the legitimacy it needed to survive. The second, Lionel Messi to Inter Miami (2023), acted as an exponential multiplier; a strategic injection that transitioned MLS from a domestic entity into a global content engine.

In signing Messi, Beckham was likely looking at a blueprint he helped design, yet he understood better than anyone how much the economic landscape had shifted since his arrival.

While both involved icons, a granular look at the contractual architectures and media landscapes reveals two entirely different realities.

Note: Although we’ve analyzed both shifts, it’s critical to note that the true test will be the long-term impact once Messi eventually leaves MLS, whether through transfer or retirement.

The “Messiah” Precedent: Pelé and the NASL

Before Beckham or Messi, there was Pelé. In 1975, the New York Cosmos signed the Brazilian legend to “win a country.” Pelé transformed “soccer” from a peripheral immigrant game into a cultural phenomenon, attracting sell-out crowds of 80,000 at Giants Stadium.

However, the Pelé era remains a cautionary tale. While he provided instant credibility, the league (NASL) relied on “vanity capital” and unsustainable spending. When Pelé retired, the star-driven bubble burst, and the NASL folded in 1985. His legacy was the proof that the U.S. could love football, but it lacked the business infrastructure to keep that love profitable.

2007: The Stabilization Phase

In 2007, David Beckham joined a league that was effectively in “recovery mode.” Just five years prior, MLS had faced insolvency, contracting to just 10 teams. The business fundamentals were fragile: average valuations hovered around $35M, and media rights brought in a mere $7.5M per year.1

The commercial model was primitive, relying almost exclusively on ticket sales (with an average attendance in 2006 of just 15,000) in oversized NFL stadiums that “killed” the product’s visual appeal on TV2. The introduction of the Designated Player Rule was a financial bridge, and it allowed MLS to acquire the very first global IP in football while maintaining the strict cost controls necessary to avoid the fate of the NASL.

2023: The Exponential Multiplier

By the time Lionel Messi arrived, the league had undergone a total metamorphosis. It was no longer a project in survival but rather a venture in scaling. By 2023, the average franchise valuation had surged to $582M, with clubs like LAFC nearing the $1B mark3. The expansion fee for San Diego FC hit $500M—a staggering 50x increase since the Beckham era.

Crucially, Messi’s arrival coincided with a landmark 10-year, $2.5B partnership with Apple4. This signaled a strategic pivot from fragmented cable television to a global DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) model. While Beckham’s matches were often difficult to find outside the U.S., Messi’s were instantly monetizable across 100+ countries5.

This digital maturity was matched by physical infrastructure; by 2023, most clubs played in modern, soccer-specific stadiums with average attendances of 21,000–22,000—figures now comparable to Serie A or Ligue 1.6

The Regulatory Innovation and Its Consequences

The 2007 arrival of David Beckham was a catalyst for a regulatory overhaul. The Designated Player Rule allowed MLS to bypass its own rigid salary cap by letting owners pay superstars directly without depleting the league’s shared budget pool. Under this rule, a player’s cap hit was fixed (at $400,000 in 2007), while the “excess” salary was off-book.7

While Beckham’s $6.5M salary was a 70% cut from his Real Madrid wages, his team engineered a deal based on revenue sharing across all club touchpoints—from merchandise to concessions.8 However, the most lucrative asset was the $25M fixed-fee expansion option—a clause Beckham later exercised to establish Inter Miami. As expansion fees surged to $500M (San Diego FC), this single contractual line item generated a staggering $475M in unrealized equity.

Share

Lionel Messi’s 2023 contract, with a base salary of $50M–$60M, is merely the floor of his compensation. His true value is tied to the global distribution engine. By receiving a cut of Apple TV subscriptions, Messi’s incentives are vertically integrated with the league’s streaming success—a move that saw 110,000 sign-ups in 24 hours.9

His profit-sharing deal with Adidas further cements his role as a “quasi-corporate partner” in the league’s commercial licensing arm. Finally, through an ownership option in Inter Miami, Messi is directly tied to the club’s 72% valuation jump, moving him from player to stakeholder in a global sports asset.10 (and repeating Beckham’s story).

The Media Landscape and the Ecosystem Conversion

The contrast between the Beckham and Messi eras is most visible in the “pipes” through which content flows. We have transitioned from a localized, linear broadcast struggle to a global, data-driven streaming singularity.

In 2007, Beckham’s arrival triggered an initial 50% viewership spike, with early games drawing up to 522,000 households on ESPN2.11 However, this “Beckham Bump” proved difficult to sustain; average viewership eventually regressed to 253,000, a stagnation mirrored by the 2010 MLS Cup.

The primary barrier was structural: the league was hamstrung by domestic-focused cable deals, while international rights were sold piecemeal. This fragmented landscape meant fans in the UK or Asia had no reliable way to watch Beckham live, severely capping the monetization of his global fame.

Messi’s 2023 arrival coincided with the launch of the MLS-Apple partnership, creating a “perfect storm” for vertical monetization. The results were immediate: subscriptions to the MLS Season Pass more than doubled, with Apple recording its highest-ever volume of new subscribers on the day of his debut.12

For Apple, the real win was the “Halo Effect”, converting 15% of fans who signed up for the MLS Pass converted into broader Apple TV+ subscribers, shifting the audience from domestic and aging to global and young (with fans tuning in from over 100 countries, with 70% of the Apple TV audience under the age of 45.13), and with Spanish-language viewership surpassing 50%, finally engaging the Latin American market at scale.

The Fan Economy Impact

Both David Beckham and Lionel Messi transformed regular-season matches into “must-see” events, but the scale of their impact reveals a fundamental shift in pricing power and merchandise elasticity.

Beckham’s arrival provided an immediate “novelty bump.” In 2007, the Galaxy led the league with an average attendance of 24,252—a 16.5% year-over-year increase.

During that latter half of the year, his away matches accounted for nearly 10% of total league attendance. However, this effect had a commercial “half-life.” By 2010, the novelty had waned, and attendance regressed to pre-Beckham levels as the “away tour” magic faded.

In contrast, the demand for Messi has displayed extreme price inelasticity, with secondary market prices surged by over 1,000% for Inter Miami home games and 400–500% for away matches.1415 And unlike the Beckham era, where games remained in smaller soccer-specific stadiums, Messi’s arrival forced a shift to high-capacity NFL venues to meet demand.

While Beckham’s impact cooled after two seasons, Messi’s demand remained at record highs into 2025, helping the league surpass 11 million total fans for the first time.16

Building a Global Fashion Staple

The scale of merchandise sales illustrates the jump from a domestic success to a global lifestyle brand. In 2007, the Galaxy sold 300,000 jerseys—a league record at the time that drove a massive 730% increase in MLS merchandise revenue.17

By 2025, Inter Miami reached a stratosphere occupied only by European titans. The club sold over 2.1 million jerseys, ranking 5th globally behind only Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG, and Bayern Munich.18 The “easy pink” kit moved from a team uniform to a global fashion staple, representing an order of magnitude leap in commercial licensing.

The Asset Class Shift

The ultimate scorecard for these signings is the financial health of the franchises and the league. The data reveals a definitive pivot from steady appreciation to explosive, multi-generational growth.

Revenue Growth: Following Beckham’s 2007 arrival, the LA Galaxy saw significant growth driven by record jersey sales and the landmark Herbalife sponsorship ($4–5M annually). This led the Galaxy to become the first profitable franchise in MLS history. However, their revenue streams remained traditional: localized ticket sales, domestic sponsors, and stadium concessions.

In contrast, Inter Miami’s revenue trajectory is unprecedented in North American sports history:

• 2022 (Pre-Messi): $50–60M

• 2023 (Partial Messi): $120–130M

• 2024 (Full Messi): Projected >$200M

• 2025 (Projected): $250M+

This 300%+ growth in just two years completely dwarfs the proportional gains of the Beckham era, shifting the club from a local sports team to a global commercial powerhouse.

Franchise Valuations: In 2008, an MLS expansion team cost roughly $30–40M. The “Beckham Effect” was primarily one of stabilization since it provided a floor for valuations and prevented a league-wide collapse.

The Messi Era has triggered a vertical takeoff. Inter Miami’s valuation skyrocketed from ~$600M to over $1.03B in a single year—a 72% increase. This ripple effect lifted the league-wide average to $678M, with four clubs (LAFC, Atlanta, Galaxy, and Miami) now member of the “Billion Dollar Club.”

The most critical financial insight is the decoupling of valuation from revenue. While elite European clubs typically trade at 3–5x revenue, Inter Miami and other top MLS franchises are trading at multiples as high as 10x. This suggests that investors are no longer valuing these clubs as traditional sports utilities, but as high-growth tech platforms, pricing in the massive global future that Messi’s IP has unlocked.

Conclusions

To Recap:

Comparing David Beckham’s arrival to Lionel Messi’s is less a comparison of two athletes and more a study of two distinct phases in the lifecycle of Major League Soccer.

• Beckham’s arrival was an investment in survival. He put MLS on the map, proved the Designated Player model was viable, and stabilized a league that was then teetering on irrelevance. His economic impact was primarily domestic and his legacy is the very structure of the league and the expansion of the map. Quite literally: without Beckham, there is no Inter Miami.

• Messi’s arrival is an investment in dominance. He utilized the foundation Beckham built to launch MLS into the global stratosphere. His economic impact is international—driving subscriptions in Europe and Asia and turning pink jerseys into a South American fashion staple. His legacy is the total commercialization of the league via the Apple partnership and the shattering of the valuation ceiling. He has transformed MLS from a “retirement league” into a global lifestyle brand that now competes with European giants for mindshare, if not yet for on-field supremacy.

In quantitative terms, the “Messi Effect” is approximately 4x to 10x the “Beckham Effect”, depending on the metric (Revenue, Valuation, or Merchandise). However, strictly separating the two ignores their causal relationship. The ecosystem required to monetize Messi (specifically the robust franchise values, the soccer-specific stadiums, and the regulatory framework) simply would not have existed without the stabilization of the Beckham era.

Beckham built the house; Messi filled it with gold.

Leave a comment

I made a promise in my previous posts and notes: this deep dive wouldn’t go live until we hit 100 subscribers. Last week, we officially crossed that line.

As I mentioned in one of my notes, this first milestone is a major validation of Off-Ball Logic. It proves there is a real appetite for sports business analysis that looks beyond the traditional U.S./Europe axis.

Thank you to the first 100 of you for trusting this “outsider” perspective and validating the thesis behind this newsletter. I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate our growth than by sharing this with you.

For a more detailed breakdown of Messi’s impact in the MLS, please read my previous post:

Thank you for being part of this.

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

Subscribe to get it in your inbox:

Subscribe now

Today’s deep dive examines a tale of two trajectories. We’re looking at the competing models of development in East Asia—two distinct approaches that have reshaped the business of sport across the region in very different ways.

• Japan’s “Soft Power” Strategy: How a meticulous, community-first vision built a sustainable and resilient ecosystem.

• China’s “Hard Money” Approach: Why a model driven by speculative capital and hyper-investment eventually buckled under macroeconomic pressure.

Note: I’m planning a follow-up post focused exclusively on the branding, marketing, and positioning mechanics of these leagues.

Would you like a Part 2, or are you ready for a new topic? Cast your vote in the survey at the end of this post!

The Global Shift Toward the East

In 1985, the commercial center of gravity in sports was firmly anchored in North America and Western Europe, defined by a nascent synergy between television broadcasters and corporate sponsors.

At that time, Asia (alongside Africa and Oceania) was largely viewed through the lens of talent extraction or peripheral engagement; regions that consumed Western content but offered limited infrastructure for sophisticated marketing ecosystems.

However, as we stand in the mid-2020s, this paradigm has been inverted. The last 40 years have witnessed the rise of the Global South and the East not merely as consumers, but as the primary engines of innovation, disruption, and valuation in the sports business world.

Sports marketing has evolved into a multi-faceted discipline encompassing nation branding, infrastructure diplomacy, digital ecosystem development, and the financialization of cultural assets. This point is already covered in my first post:

The Early Days of Sports Marketing in Asia

In the mid-1980s, sports advertising was predominantly an analog affair. The primary vehicles for marketing were physical assets: stadium hoardings, print media, and rudimentary jersey sponsorships. Although the industry has since evolved from wooden signs to today’s LED spectaculars, the 1985 landscape was far more modest.1

In Asia, the late 1980s marked a period of transition from amateurism and state-sponsored recreation toward professionalization. In many post-colonial nations, sport was viewed primarily as a tool for nation-building and social cohesion rather than a commercial enterprise. However, global currents were shifting.

How Global Broadcasts Created the "Remote Fan"

The pivotal moment arrived in the early 1990s with the proliferation of satellite television and the formation of the English Premier League (EPL) in 1992. The EPL’s marketing strategy was aggressively internationalist. By bundling broadcast rights and selling them to burgeoning satellite providers in Asia (such as Star TV), the EPL created a remote fan base that would eventually dwarf its domestic audience.2

This era established a consumption habit that marketers still grapple with today: the “long-distance fan.” This created a dual-speed marketing economy where global brands (Coca-Cola, Gillette) could reach Asian consumers through European broadcasts, while local leagues struggled for visibility and investment.

The Birth of the J.League: A Counter-Narrative

To set the mood for this era, I’ve chosen a playlist that captures the nostalgic, high-energy transition leading to the birth of the J.League.

While the rest of Asia was largely consuming imported content, Japan was engineering a domestic revolution.

Before the dawn of the J.League in 1993, Japanese football was organized under the Japan Soccer League (JSL).

This era was defined by a corporate welfare model where teams were not independent business entities but rather recreational departments of major industrial conglomerates. Powerhouses like Furukawa Electric, Mitsubishi Motors, and Nissan dominated the landscape.3

The structural limitation of the JSL was its insularity. Players were technically employees of these companies, obligated to clock in for office work in the morning before training in the afternoon.

While this system provided employment security and a post-retirement career path within the keiretsu (conglomerate), it stifled competitive growth and fan engagement. The stadiums were often company grounds, and the “fans” were primarily fellow employees whose attendance was encouraged or mandated by corporate culture.

Resilience Through Community

The “J.League 100 Year Plan” was a marketing masterstroke that prioritized “hometown” identity over corporate branding. Clubs were required to drop corporate names—Mitsubishi Motors FC became Urawa Red Diamonds—to foster deep emotional ties with local municipalities.4

This was a fundamental business shift: moving the value proposition from B2B corporate prestige to B2C community engagement. In a country where baseball was the dominant corporate sport, football offered something different: local pride.

As Andres Iniesta (Vissel Kobe Legend) mentioned:

“Winning matches is hard at any club, but in Japan it’s something really difficult. Every team is similar and very tough to play against... I wanted to keep feeling like a footballer. The scenario is different and the project is different, what hasn’t changed is the responsibility and passion that I have to play football.” 5

This “To-Consumer” strategy now involves sophisticated data usage.

The J.LEAGUE ID system centralizes fan data across all clubs, allowing the league to track behavior from “awareness” to “regular attendance.”6 In 2024, this data-driven approach, combined with “The Kokuritsu Day” (hosting matches at the National Stadium) and anime/manga collaborations, drove attendance to a record 12.5 million.7

Also, as mentioned by in How Football Explains Asia:

Clubs are rooted in their communities and the J.League has imposed financial regulations which mean financial transparency, balanced budgets and proof of long-term financial health.

Read more below:

Furthermore, the J.League’s commercial resilience is bolstered by a 12-year broadcast partnership with DAZN (extended to 2033). This deal includes a profit-sharing mechanism, incentivizing DAZN to actively market the league rather than acting as a passive rights holder.8

China’s Super League: A Capital-First Model

In stark contrast, the Chinese Super League (CSL) provides a cautionary tale of “marketing by decree.”

While organized play in China dates back to 1951, the professional era truly began with the 1994 Jia-A League. However, that era was plagued by gambling and corruption, creating a “troubled investment environment.” This led to the creation of the Chinese Super League, established in 2004 as a rebranding of the Jia-A, intended to introduce “truly commercial methods” and professionalize the market operation.9

However, unlike the J.League’s cultural reset, the CSL’s birth was more administrative.

In the mid-2010s, encouraged by state ambitions to turn China into a football superpower, real estate and insurance conglomerates poured billions into the league. Clubs like Guangzhou Evergrande and Jiangsu Suning broke transfer records for global stars like Oscar and Hulk, aiming to market the league through sheer star power.10

However, the business model was fundamentally flawed. The clubs were marketing vehicles for parent companies, not sustainable businesses. Revenue streams were dependent on corporate subsidies rather than organic growth (tickets, merchandise). When the Chinese real estate sector faced a liquidity crisis (epitomized by the Evergrande collapse11), the funding evaporated.

The impact was catastrophic. Jiangsu Suning ceased operations just months after winning the 2021 league title.12 While CSL broadcast rights were once sold for $1.7 billion, the value collapsed when the corporate bubble burst, proving that marketing hype cannot substitute for business fundamentals.13

Leave a comment

The Market Gap: Global Fans vs. Local Revenue

This brings us to the “Asian Paradox”: the region contains the world’s largest population of football fans, yet the primary beneficiaries are European clubs. Global giants have executed sophisticated localization strategies to capture this value:

• Esports Entry: Partnering with local teams (e.g., PSG with Talon) to insert the brand into the digital lives of Asian youth.14

• Physical Presence: Permanent regional offices in Singapore and Hong Kong to manage partnerships directly.15

• Cultural Marketing: High-production “Lunar New Year” campaigns featuring stars speaking Mandarin to drive engagement on Weibo and Douyin.16

Conclusion

To Recap:

• The J.League, inaugurated in 1993, was born from a meticulous “100 Year Vision” rooted in community integration, grassroots development, and corporate independence.

• It prioritized the creation of a “sports culture” over immediate commercial dominance, utilizing cultural exports like anime and a distinct “Hometown” system to embed clubs into the social fabric of Japanese cities.

• Conversely, the CSL, particularly in its post-2010 iteration, represented a model of state-directed hyper-capitalism.

• Fueled by the 2015 National Football Reform Plan and massive speculative investment from the real estate sector, the CSL sought to shortcut the developmental process through the acquisition of high-profile global talent and rapid infrastructure expansion.

The last 40 years have moved East Asia from the periphery to the center of the sports industry. The “Star Diplomacy” of China and the “Community Resilience” of Japan offer distinct alternatives to the Western playbook.

For global marketers, the lesson is clear: these are not merely markets to be sold to, but innovation hubs to be studied. The future of sports marketing—digital, mobile, and culturally integrated—is being written in Tokyo, Shanghai, and beyond.

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

Your Turn!

What’s Next for Off-Ball Logic? Should we go deeper into the branding mechanics of the CSL and J.League next week, or pivot to a new region? Vote below!

Note: If you selected “another topic” as an option, please leave your recommendation below.

Recommended Reading:

• The NFL’s Global Strategy Is Coming Into Focus by : A detailed analysis of the NFL’s international commercial expansion and its roadmap for global growth.

• The Battle for the Soul of Sports Broadcasting by : An exploration of the shifting landscape in sports journalism, and the ongoing struggle to protect editorial quality in a challenging market.

If you have any recommendations related with today’s topic, please drop them in the comments!

Leave a comment

Subscribe to get it in your inbox:

Subscribe now

Today we are looking at the numbers behind the most significant commercial shift in North American football (or soccer1) history. The arrival of Lionel Messi at Inter Miami CF was not merely a transfer but a macroeconomic event that restructured Major League Soccer’s valuation models and revenue streams. Spanning from his debut in 2023 through the 2025 season, the data reveals a complete shift in the commercial viability of football in the United States2.

Financially, the club, which debuted in 2020, has evolved from a mid-tier expansion franchise into a global “super-club”. The “Messi Effect” generated an estimated $84 million in incremental ticket revenue for opposing clubs in the first 18 months alone, driven by aggressive dynamic pricing strategies and venue shifts to high-capacity NFL stadiums3. Socially, the club has eclipsed traditional US sports heavyweights, boasting engagement metrics by late 2025 that rivaled leading NBA and NFL franchises4.

Revenue Growth

Prior to 2023, Inter Miami’s revenue profile was typical of a newer MLS expansion team, hovering around $50 million annually with limited global appeal. By 2024, revenue stabilized at a record high.

This surge placed Inter Miami in a financial tier previously occupied only by European powerhouses. Operating income for the 2023-2024 period was reported at approximately $50 million, a remarkable margin for an MLS club driven by high-yield sponsorship and premium seating.

The correlation between this revenue growth and franchise valuation has been exponential. In early 2023, Inter Miami was valued at approximately $585 million. By 2025, the valuation surged to $1.2 billion, representing a 17% year-over-year increase, the highest growth rate in the league.

Sponsorship Strategy

This “Messi Effect” fundamentally altered the club’s sponsorship hierarchy. Post-2023, the club shifted from local partnerships to global blue-chip partners. In 2024, sponsorship revenue alone was projected to reach nearly $60 million, double the previous season’s figure and significantly higher than the MLS average of approximately $17 million.

Key partnerships solidified during this period include Royal Caribbean (jersey sponsor), JP Morgan Chase (stadium naming rights), and global brands like Duracell and Trapiche. The strategy shifted from volume to yield, leveraging the scarcity of association with Messi to command premiums standard in European leagues but anomalous in the MLS ecosystem5.

Sharing Economy

The phenomenon created a unique economy where opposing teams could budget for massive financial windfalls. Data indicates that Messi generated nearly $84 million in incremental revenue for other MLS clubs by mid-2025.

According to Goal.com:

A spokesperson from Sportsmillions.com said: “Whether it’s $50 or $750 a seat, people are willing to stretch their budgets just to be in the same stadium as Messi. Seeing Messi in the flesh is not just a game anymore, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event, a bucket list moment. Clubs know it, fans know it, and the numbers prove it.

Teams like the New York Red Bulls saw ticket prices surge from $45 to $496 for the Miami fixture, and the Columbus Crew saw prices rise from $35 to $421. To accommodate demand, franchises relocated matches to NFL venues.

The Chicago Fire, for instance, generated between $7 million and $10 million from their Soldier Field match, a sum greater than all their other home games combined for that season6.

• Sporting KC: 4th largest standalone MLS crowd

• NE Revolution: Broken club attendance record

• Chicago Fire: Shattered previous club record.

• Columbus Crew: Record for non-NFL event at venue

• Vancouver Whitecaps: Club record attendance.7

Media Rights & Social Reach

The 10-year, $2.5 billion partnership between MLS and Apple TV coincided with Messi’s arrival. The service saw a 280% spike in subscriptions on the day of his debut8. By the end of 2023, the service had surpassed 2 million subscribers9.

Critically, the audience is young and highly engaged. 70% of viewers for the 2025 MLS Cup were under the age of 45, with an average viewing time of 70 minutes10. The platform also allowed MLS to bypass fractured international rights deals, making Inter Miami games accessible globally without blackouts, a key selling point for non-US markets11.

However, we are seeing a strategic pivot. Reports in late 2025 indicate that the standalone “MLS Season Pass” model may be restructured for 2026, integrating content directly into the broader Apple TV+ ecosystem to mitigate churn and capitalize on the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup12.

This digital dominance extends to social media, where Inter Miami has effectively “broken” the scale of MLS.

As seen above, Inter Miami’s following on platforms favored by Gen Z dwarfs that of major NFL franchises, including the Super Bowl-winning Chiefs.

Merchandise

The commercial “halo effect” is perhaps most visible in jersey sales. While Messi naturally tops the list, his presence has elevated his teammates into the top tier of commercial viability, creating a “Miami Quadrant” at the top of the sales charts.

Notably, other Inter Miami players like Sergio Busquets (Rank 16) and Benjamin Cremaschi (Rank 23) also appeared in the top 25, showing that the brand’s popularity lifted the profile of the entire roster13.

Challenges

While this era has created unprecedented prosperity, it has introduced significant economic disparities that the league must now manage.

• The Attendance Gap: While Inter Miami drives spikes for hosts, teams that did not host Miami or were undergoing renovations saw attendance declines, highlighting an uneven landscape where the league relies heavily on one driver14.

• Competitive Balance: The success of Miami has emboldened the league to loosen its “training wheels.” Upcoming rule changes regarding unlimited cash trades are designed to allow other teams to compete with Miami’s spending power, effectively creating an internal market for talent15.

• Sustainability: The looming question is the “post-Messi” drop-off. However, the club is building a buffer through the $1 billion Miami Freedom Park development. Scheduled to open in 2026, this complex will control surrounding retail and hospitality, insulating the club’s finances.

There is a fundamental shift underway that deserves our attention. As mentioned in , MLS operates under a unique “single-entity” model, where clubs function as investor-operated franchises rather than independent entities. Membership is strictly controlled, markets are chosen strategically, and teams enter the league through expansion rather than traditional sporting merit.

Inside the Boardroom

MLS: A Closed League Trying to Become a Global Power

Read more

5 months ago · 14 likes · 4 comments · Boardroom Ball and James Callan

The looming question is: how is the “Messi effect” pushing the boundaries of the status quo within this rigid, structured system?

A Note on the “Beckham Effect”

When we talk about the “Messi Effect,” we often need to compare it with the last time such a seismic shift hit the MLS and revolutionized the sport: the arrival of David Beckham (one of Inter Miami’s current ownes) rin 2007. I am currently working on a deep dive comparing these two eras, how the business landscape has evolved from Beckham’s LA Galaxy to Messi’s Inter Miami.

I will release this exclusive comparison once we reach 100 subscribers, so stay tuned and please share Off-Ball Logic with your network!

Share

Future Outlook: 2026 and Beyond

As we look toward 2026, the club is preparing for a “perfect storm” of synergies: the final year of Messi’s contract, the opening of Miami Freedom Park, and the FIFA World Cup in North America.

• Infrastructure as Buffer: The $1 billion Miami Freedom Park complex is designed to insulate the club from a post-Messi dip. Unlike the current temporary venue, this 25,000-seat stadium will generate revenue 365 days a year through on-site hotel, retail, and office leasing .

• Global Integration (Copa Libertadores): Negotiations are progressing for MLS participation in CONMEBOL’s Copa Libertadores. Inter Miami’s inclusion would open a massive new revenue stream and competitive tier, further validating the roster investment16.

• Calendar Alignment: The league is actively adjusting transfer windows and scheduling to align better with the European calendar. This shift is critical for facilitating the movement of high-value talent, reducing the friction of mid-season arrivals17.

• Broadcast Evolution: As we mentioned before, reports indicate a strategic pivot for Apple TV in 2026. To mitigate churn when Miami isn’t playing, MLS Season Pass may be bundled more aggressively into the core Apple TV+ subscription, shifting from a pure revenue play to an ecosystem lock-in.

Conclusion

The “Messi Effect” will be studied for decades as a case study in star power economics. By leveraging a single asset, Inter Miami shortened a decade’s worth of brand building into 24 months, forcing the entire league to modernize its infrastructure, media strategy, and valuation benchmarks.

As the league transitions to 2026, the challenge shifts from capitalizing on mania to managing legacy, ensuring that the millions of new digital followers translate into a sustainable football economy that endures after the #10 jersey is retired.

Next Week: With the Chinese Super League bubble officially burst, we’ll analyze where that capital is moving next.

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

Leave a comment

I write about how narratives create value, how identity shapes teams and players, and how the game is sold, told, and understood.

Subscribe to get it in your inbox:

Subscribe now

Welcome back to Off-Ball Logic.

Today’s issue explores one of the most aggressive repositioning strategies in global sport: how CAF is using scarcity and mobile-first distribution to revalue African football.

The continent is seeing its biggest media shake-up since the 90s. The traditional “commercial architecture” of the game is shifting, creating a high-stakes battle between old-school satellite giants and a new wave of mobile-first digital players. Backed by CAF, these aggressive new actors are moving fast to capture the massive growth emerging across the continent.

Scarcity as a Value

In marketing terms, brand equity is often built through the balance of availability and exclusivity.

The primary driver of current market volatility is the radical restructuring of the CAF tournament calendar. For decades, the biennial nature of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) was a point of friction with European clubs. The decision to move to a four-year cycle starting in 2028 marks a watershed moment designed to create commercial scarcity,1 essentially manufacturing FOMO. When a tournament happens every other year, it’s a commodity, when it happens every four years, it’s a “rare event.”

However, this strategic pivot did not come without internal pushback. Many regional leaders feel the move was forced through without the consensus of the whole federation.

“The decision was already made,” said one federation president who did not want to be named. “They said it would be discussed in Morocco, but in the end there was no discussion. We’re killing ourselves. If there had been a general assembly and all the presidents were allowed to vote, it would never have passed.”2

For many Africans, this isn’t only a matter of “watchability.” It is deeply linked to the lost opportunity of seeing a generation’s most iconic players represent their countries on their home continent more frequently. By following the pattern of competitions like the Copa América and the UEFA model, CAF is betting that prestige pricing and exclusivity will outweigh high-frequency exposure.

To fill the financial vacuum in non-AFCON years, CAF is engaging in product diversification with the debut of the African Nations League (ANL) in 2029. The tournament format divides the continent into four geographical zones, with regional qualifiers played during the September and October windows before culminating in a knockout final phase in November.3

The 2025 AFCON edition in Morocco, which concluded just a few weeks ago, is already being framed as the “most successful commercial story in the history of African football,” boasting a 155% increase in corporate partners compared to 2021.4

Here’s an interesting question from : Is change really needed?

Sportsvrse

Looking Back at AFCON 2025 - What’s next for the future of African football?

The dust has now settled on AFCON 2025. The 35th edition of the tournament ended in dramatic fashion last Sunday, with Senegal defeating hosts Morocco to become African champions for the 2nd time in their history…

Read more

4 months ago · 15 likes · 4 comments · Maxwell Kablan

He also noted, interestingly, that the tournament secured 23 global sponsors, surpassing the previous record of 17 set during the 2023 edition in Ivory Coast. Worth reading the full breakdown in the link above.

Market Disruption: The New World TV Era

While the tournament structure provides the “what,” the “who” is being reshaped by a fierce battle for market penetration. To understand the current volatility, we have to look at how the traditional dominance of MultiChoice (via SuperSport) and Canal+ has been decisively challenged.

Just before the 2023 AFCON, MultiChoice announced it would not broadcast the tournament, a major blow to its 20 million subscribers.

In late 2023, New World TV (NWTV), a Togolese satellite broadcaster, secured exclusive rights to CAF competitions in 46 sub-Saharan countries, effectively upending the established order.5

The rise of New World TV proves that the big media giants no longer hold all the power. We’ve moved into a "messy" era where rights are split up and sold to the highest bidder.

While this makes African football more valuable, it creates a difficult trade-off: do we focus on maximizing profit or making sure every fan has access to the game?

Mobile Screen is the Only Screen

This conflict over broadcast rights isn’t just about which satellite provider wins, it’s about a profound shift in the consumer journey. As fans move away from the traditional television set, the smartphone is becoming the primary stadium for millions. The Africa Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) market is projected to grow from $3.04 billion in 2025 to $4.58 billion by 2030.6

In a landmark deal, Orange Middle East and Africa (OMEA) secured mobile-only rights for 35 matches via its “Max it” super app. This is a masterclass in increasing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) by integrating sports content into a broader fintech and communication ecosystem.7

• Target Markets: Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cameroon, DRC, Mali.

• The Strategy: Integrating live football into a super-app that provides financial and communication services, creating a digital ecosystem that bypasses satellite entirely.

A Tale of Two Models

The success of these continental, digital-first experiments highlights a stark dichotomy when we look at domestic leagues. While CAF-level properties are thriving under this new digital sovereignty, domestic products show a mix of economic fragility and localized growth.

• The Nigerian Collapse (Low ROI): In August 2025, the five-year, 6 billion Nigerian naira (approx. 4 million USD) deal between the NPFL and StarTimes terminated after only two years. The failure was attributed to low decoder sales (poor market fit) and skyrocketing production costs.8

• The South African Benchmark (Vertical Integration): The PSL continues to set the standard, utilizing a “dominant firm” principle where MultiChoice secures exclusive rights and sub-licenses “public interest” matches. This maintains high brand equity for the primary broadcaster while ensuring broad visibility.9

• The Tanzanian Surge (Hyper-local Positioning): Driven by Azam TV, the NBC Premier League has become a reliable economic engine, successfully positioning itself as the premier sports brand in East Africa.10

The “Big Money” Debate

The disconnect between thriving continental events and struggling domestic leagues comes down to one marketing reality: fragmentation is a bad product.

Big brands and investors look for a “clean buy”: centralized rights, consistent quality, and easy scale. Most domestic leagues are currently “unpackaged” products, operating in market-by-market silos that are too messy for global sponsors to touch. Without a centralized story to sell, there’s no way to build real brand equity.

As a result, the money is pivoting toward narrative equity. Elite players have become portable media brands that are easier to buy into than the leagues themselves. Until domestic systems fix their “product packaging” and centralize their rights, the big checks will stay concentrated at the poles: the global superstars and the continental giants.

Conclusion

The shift from satellite to mobile is inevitable, but the transition will be messy. While the “scarcity model” looks great on a pitch deck, the reality of the Nigerian league’s deal collapse proves that product-market fit is still the ultimate judge.

We are entering a period of volatility. The winners won’t necessarily be the ones with the best players, but the ones who can reduce the friction between the fan and the screen. Africa is no longer just a talent export hub but rather is becoming a media innovation lab, and the rest of the football world should be taking notes.

Next Week: We are shifting gears to look at the “Messi Effect.” We’ll analyze the hard numbers behind the hype in: How Inter Miami and MLS revenue changed after Messi.

Carla | Off-Ball Logic

Leave a comment

Welcome back to Off-Ball Logic.

Before we dive into today’s topic, I want to say a massive thank you to all of you. The growth of this channel over the last few weeks has been incredible. It’s great to see such strong engagement with the “Off-Ball” deep dives. Whether you’re here for the marketing strategy or the sports culture, I’m glad you’re part of this.

Today we are going even more “off-ball”, as we’re going to talk about cars. I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately, even though the direction for this post was already settled. This exploration began with an informal chat among friends, where we lamented the scarcity of truly “epic” football films we could confidently suggest. Despite my deep passion for the sport, most movies fail to capture the intense narrative drama that a series like Drive to Survive (DTS) successfully delivered.

Watching Marty Supreme reinforced a specific idea for me: compelling sports narratives use character archetypes and stereotypes to draw the audience into deeper life issues, moving beyond a focus merely on the sport itself. The best examples emphasize the search for belonging and community, making the final score (the resolution) secondary to the emotional tension of the journey.

Now, let’s explore the core subject of this edition:

The Context

For decades, FIA bosses wrestled with how to engage a younger audience and break into the largely untapped US market. These were seen as keys to the very survival of the sport1.

While F1 was always popular, it struggled to attract new fans outside of Europe because the races could seem complicated and predictable.

Everything changed in 2016 when Liberty Media purchased F1 for $4.4bn. New management implemented strategies to rejuvenate the sport, targeting a younger demographic through initiatives like F1TV and increased social media accessibility2.

Note: For a more in-depth understanding of statistics and impact, this Substack post is highly recommended, it’s an excellent read. Kudos to .

The AO

Drive to Survive’s economic and popularity impact on F1

Editor’s note: True F1 aficionado since the days of Schumacher vs Alonso…

Read more

2 years ago · 3 likes · Alessandro Oehy

The most notable move was the 2018 partnership with Netflix for Drive to Survive. Originally intended to focus only on Red Bull Racing, the scope was broadened after negotiations with production company Box To Box.

They brought in co-producers James Gay-Rees (known for the documentary Senna) and Paul Martin, ensuring the series had the right creative expertise to balance history with modern drama.

The Pillars of the Narrative: Power of Personality and Drama

Storytelling plays the central role in turning what was once a very closed community into an open group of people whose passions and emotions are laid bare on screen3.

This was achieved through two main pillars: the power of personality and deliberate drama.

From the start, the series sought to humanize F1 drivers, team principals, and those working in the paddock. DTS succeeded in profiling every team and clearly explaining the chasms that exist in both budgets and expectations. Newcomers quickly learned what constitutes a “successful season” for Mercedes compared to Williams.

With journalists like Will Buxton offering context, the show built a narrative arc for the entire season rather than just reporting race results.

The constant presence of high stakes (financial, political, and life-threatening) inherently structures Formula 1. The show’s producers demonstrated skill in leveraging these elements:

“Formula One is an extremely bitchy world,” says James Gay-Rees. “That’s why it’s such a great place to make a show. There are heroes and villains. People are out to win at any price and will do whatever it takes.”

“I found F1 to be an incredibly unique sport in that your teammate is also your, in many ways, greatest competition. That makes for a great drama,” recalls F1 director Joseph Kosinski.4

When Season 1 launched in March 2019, this behind-the-scenes approach was an instant hit, breaking into Netflix’s top 25 ranked series within the first fortnight.

The Impact

Over those first two weeks, an estimated 2.4 million unique views (UV)5 were recorded, numbers usually reserved for True Crime series like Making A Murderer.

By May 2023, the series had been watched by 6.8 million people. The breakdown showed its transformative effect:

• 26% of viewers had no real interest in F1 before

• 31% were aged between 18 and 29

• and 46% of the viewership were women6.

This shift has usher in massive sponsorship from the US, with average viewership up 70% over the last few years. According to , the downstream effect has seen companies like Google, Coca-Cola, and Oracle upping their investment7.

Tanay’s Newsletter

Drive to Survive and Content Marketing

Hi friends…

Read more

4 years ago · 12 likes · 1 comment · Tanay Jaipuria

Specific recent deals highlight this “Netflix effect”:

• Oracle (Red Bull): A five-year deal estimated at $500 million ($100M/season), widely cited as one of the largest in F1 history [RacingNews365].

• HP (Ferrari): A multi-year title partnership estimated at $100 million per season, matching the Oracle/Red Bull deal [Motorsport Week].

• Mastercard (McLaren): A massive title sponsorship set to begin in 2026, estimated by The Athletic to be worth $100 million per season—potentially the largest on the grid [Mastercard Official].

• Google (McLaren): A multi-year primary partnership that recently shifted its visual focus from Chrome to Gemini AI branding [McLaren Racing].

• MoneyGram (Haas): A multi-year title deal for the only US-owned team, estimated at roughly $20 million per year [BlackBook Motorsport].

• Visa & Cash App (RB): A groundbreaking title partnership that rebranded the former AlphaTauri team starting in the 2024 season [Autosport].

As Toni Cowan-Brown told CNBC, “Drive-to-Survive sparked this interest in F1 during lockdown, which people then took online, creating this community of content creators who were able to show people a totally new side of the sport”8.

Controversies

Success brought its share of skeptics. Those closest to the sport argued that Netflix sought to over-dramatize events to invent storylines. While no creative license was required to fan the flames between Christian Horner and Mercedes rival Toto Wolff, certain subplots were helped along. Many also pointed to the emphasis placed on practice sessions, which were often framed as incredibly important when, in truth, they are mostly experimental.

Among the skeptics were several drivers, including world champion Max Verstappen, who refused to be interviewed for seasons 2, 3, and 4. Even the critics, however, accepted that Drive to Survive had brought fans closer to the action, some of which didn’t require Hollywood treatment. As YouGov numbers underline, the show exceeded the expectations of those who conceived it.

Replicating the Model in Football

Tennis has Break Point, Golf has Full Swing, and Rugby has Full Contact9.

In football, the closest examples like Prime Video’s All or Nothing focus on a different team each year, which is a problem if you’re not a fan of that team. Football exercises have often failed in polarizing the audience or letting them choose a side.

I think about the docuseries Becoming Champions, which narrates how the eight World Cup champions made it. I recall watching it at Fiumicino Airport, after our month-long trip to Italy.

One episode, titled “Argentina: The Hand of Fate?”, explores the “Hand of God”, which remains one of the most controversial moments in football history. As an Argentine, I aim to be as objective as possible, acknowledging that everyone is entitled to their own perspective. However, the docuseries made a conscious “moral effort” to underline that the behavior was wrong.

To me, the key to captivating football storytelling is crafting narratives that prompt analysis and encourage engagement, allowing the audience to choose a side or not, even when the situation is ambiguous or transcends the strict rules of the game.10

This is what the movie F1 did with the character Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt). He tries to beat the system by playing near the rules constantly, and his mates don’t agree. But he does what he feels needs to be done, and it’s on us to empathize or not.

Football has become more and more “friendly.” Truth be told, the game experienced huge issues with violence, leading to enormous changes like the Premier League and stadium renovations. Hence there might be a reason why football as a “friendly” sports wants to be associated with it.

But rivalries and tension will always exist (just look at the AFCON final) and that is what makes the sport attractive. Even in feel-good content like Ted Lasso, the narrative changed to show how rivalries and tension play out in matches.

Final Thoughts

Welcome to Wrexham looks like a experiment that had a good feedback because it played on the effect of a team’s ups and downs on a fragile working-class community. But whether it can keep its underdog charm as the team rises is debatable. I believe a team in the top three English leagues won’t be seen as an underdog anymore.

One of the greatest hits in DTS was how small teams became famous. For football, perhaps focusing on rivalries of teams outside the mainstream, but big enough to gain traction, could be the next topic.

It’s related to what I’m going to talk about next. I’ll only say it involves African football, but I don’t want to spoil it.

More updates coming soon.

Carla | Off-Ball Logic