When a major cultural moment comes around, marketers often face the same challenge. How do you stay visible when everyone else is competing for the same audience?
The FIFA World Cup is the perfect example. As the tournament unfolds, official sponsors and global brands dominate television, social feeds and digital advertising, while media prices continue to rise as demand for premium inventory increases. For businesses without those budgets, the challenge isn’t simply missing the tournament. It remains visible and relevant when audiences are at their most engaged.
According to WARC, the 2026 FIFA World Cup is generating an additional $10.5 billion in global advertising spend, but the real opportunity extends far beyond the live match. As WARC notes, brands are increasingly engaging fans across touchpoints before, during, and after games, reflecting how audiences now experience major sporting events. Rather than trying to outspend the competition, the smartest brands identify those moments early and build campaigns around them.
Winning attention beyond the whistle
It’s easy to assume the biggest opportunity is during the match itself. In reality, some of the most valuable moments happen before, after and around the action.
The supermarket trip before kick-off, the BBQ with friends, the commute home, the conversation on social media after a controversial decision – they’re all part of the World Cup experience. Each creates an opportunity for brands to connect with audiences without relying on the most expensive broadcast inventory.
This is where occasion-based planning becomes so valuable. Rather than asking which channels to buy first, the starting point is understanding audience behaviour. Once you know where your audience is and what they’re doing, the right media channels become much clearer.
Walkers recognised the real occasion
Walkers provides one of the clearest examples of this approach.
Although it’s an official FIFA sponsor, the success of its campaign comes from recognising that every football match starts with a trip to the supermarket. Brands recognise that fans watching from home play a central role in the tournament, and the shared love of the game gives an opportunity for human connection and getting together. Walkers launched The Greatest Watch Party Ever campaign, jumping on the behaviour of creating a WhatsApp group to organise an event with friends – five weeks before the tournament – combining television advertising with limited-edition packs, retail displays, QR codes and paid social activity to secure visibility before fans even sat down to watch the football.
By the time the opening fixtures arrived, Walkers was already in shopping baskets.
The lesson for every brand is that planning starts months, if not years, before media prices spike. This is particularly true if brands want to deliver creative with a specific local or regional slant. Getting in early to book Out of Home positions is vital to avoid inflated prices. By identifying opportunities early, businesses can plan campaigns across Digital Out of Home near supermarkets and convenience stores, retail media, and paid social while competition for broadcast inventory is still relatively low. It is often these channels, rather than television, that help brands stay visible at the moments that influence purchasing decisions.
Heinz and Heineken owned the watch party
We must congratulate Heinz and Heineken for one of the most talked-about marketing campaigns of the year.
Without paying for expensive official FIFA rights, this collaboration focused its attention on audience behaviour: people gathering in their homes for BBQs and watch parties. The six-pack concept substituted one bottle of Heineken for a bottle of Heinz ketchup, and it became the game we’ve all been waiting for. We know from experience at Route that great creative executions make paid ad spend go so much further by driving engagement and generating higher click-through rates and more conversions. The creative in this example used simple visuals that generated widespread earned media while supporting retail activity and social engagement.
Hydration breaks have become one of the tournament’s biggest talking points
One of the biggest talking points during this year’s World Cup hasn’t just been the football itself. It has been the introduction of mandatory hydration breaks.
Introduced to protect player welfare during matches played in North America’s summer heat, the breaks have divided opinion. While few dispute the importance of safeguarding players, many supporters, pundits and coaches have questioned whether the additional stoppages interrupt the flow of the game. Barney Ronay in The Guardian described the breaks as “ad breaks”, reflecting a growing perception among fans that football is becoming increasingly commercialised. Similar criticism has been echoed by coaches, including Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino, who have questioned whether mandatory breaks should be used in every match regardless of conditions.
Regardless, media owners are using the breaks and this year’s World Cup to introduce innovative formats. These include dynamic LED screens, which instantly update content, allowing for real-time adjustments depending on the country the audience is viewing from.
For Powerade, the breaks have become a natural extension of its FIFA partnership. As the tournament’s official sports drink, the brand has built its “Power Your Legacy” campaign around preparation, recovery and hydration, with the scheduled breaks reinforcing those messages in a way that feels authentic rather than intrusive. Instead of creating a new occasion, the brand is aligning itself with one that already exists, strengthening its association with player performance across television, social media, outdoor advertising, retail activation and in-stadium branding.
What can’t always be planned for is the audience’s reaction to changes in the sporting format. There is a question around associating your brand with an unpopular moment like the hydration break. Sometimes being an early adopter and spotting the opportunity is a positive, but more cautious brands may wish to see how new formats play out before committing to supporting them with creative and media spend.
Spotting opportunities created by audience behaviour
For brands without official sponsorship rights, the lesson is slightly different. The opportunity isn’t to interrupt the match itself. It’s to understand how audience behaviour changes around these moments.
For example, the anti-social match times might drive different audience behaviours. Going to work on a few hours’ sleep may require more coffee the following day – an opportunity for brands to lean into the audience’s need to be more caffeinated! As they head to work after a 2 am kick-off, post-match analysis via radio or podcasts may increase, so spotting opportunities around this behaviour is key.
While supporters are checking scores, topping up drinks or discussing the game, brands that have planned ahead can use paid social, digital audio and programmatic display to deliver contextual, reactive messaging at exactly the right time. Rather than chasing the biggest audience through increasingly expensive broadcast inventory, the focus shifts to understanding where attention moves when play pauses and building a media plan that follows it
They’re the ones that understand audience behaviour best and build their media plans around it.
Planning beats panic
The World Cup demonstrates a challenge that marketers face time and time again. Whether it’s a major sporting event, a cultural moment or a seasonal peak, there will always be periods when media demand rises, competition intensifies, and advertising budgets come under greater pressure.
The brands that succeed won’t necessarily be the ones that spend the most. They’ll be the ones that understand their audience, identify the moments that matter and plan their media around those occasions before the market becomes crowded.
The next opportunity isn’t four years away either. Next year’s Rugby World Cup, the 2028 UEFA European Championship on home soil, the 2028 Olympic Games and countless seasonal moments will all create the same challenge.
At Route, we help businesses plan, identifying the opportunities that keep brands visible when competition for attention is at its highest. If you’re looking to make your advertising budget work harder and stay front of mind with your audience, we’d love to help you plan your next campaign.