With the FIFA World Cup 2026 in full swing, some of the world’s biggest brands are investing a combined $2.8 billion for global access, exclusivity, and marketing rights for one of the world’s largest sporting events.
These investments grant partners exclusive commercial use of tournament trademarks, logos, slogans, and mascots, including usage in ad campaigns designed to transform sponsorship rights into tangible consumer connections and revenue. But are these multimillion dollar rights to use World Cup IP actually positively influencing consumers and impacting the perception metrics that matter? How do they move the needle on brand lift in favorability, purchase consideration, and intent?
To get a better understanding of the creative elements and trends that are swaying the attitudes of soccer fans across different demographics, Swayable used rapid randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology to test ads from live brand campaigns for three World Cup sponsors: Lay’s, Hyundai, and Visa.
For each brand, we measured the consumer impact of a mix of video and still ads—both with and without FIFA association—to better understand how sponsorship creative is performing during the premier global soccer event. Keep scrolling for a snapshot of the test insights we found.
When Lay's leaned into humor with their "Lay's Welcomes All to the Bandwagon" campaign, starring Will Ferrell and David Beckham, the creative concept proved to be the real MVP.
Swayable's test of four Lay's ads across 6,204 respondents found that both video ads (one with FIFA branding, one without) delivered identical lift in brand favorability, roughly 2.2X higher than the photo ads. The gap was sharpest on the metric that matters most for a snack brand: "Chip I reach for when watching a game or big event."
For marketers investing in sponsorships, the Lay's results underscore a vital lesson: when the underlying concept is strong—relatable, funny, and culturally inclusive—it carries lift across audiences regardless of whether the FIFA badge is visible. Brands that anchor their sponsorship in authentic storytelling and entertainment value can see outcomes that justify the spend.
Hyundai's test of its Next Starts Now campaign ads produced one of the most counterintuitive findings across all three brands: the video ad without FIFA World Cup badge was the strongest performer, ranking first on all six primary brand lift metrics (including favorability, consideration, and intent) across 5,959 respondents. It drove 3X higher brand favorability than the FIFA-branded video counterpart, even though the latter scored higher on ad recall and engagement.
A snapshot of how Hyundai’s creative increased favorability and purchase consideration.
The winning ad worked because it told a compelling brand story on its own terms—young athletes, Hyundai electric vehicles (EVs), an aspirational vision of the future—without leaning on the specifics of the World Cup to do the heavy lifting. When the creative is strong enough to stand alone, adding the official branding can actually dilute the brand message rather than amplify it.
Visa's test produced the most nuanced results of the three, and the most actionable creative segmentation story. Across 6,123 respondents, video ads starring Jason Sudeikis (of Ted Lasso fame) and a FIFA-branded still each drove meaningful lift—but for entirely different audiences. The ad still led on purchase metrics and was the top performer among women, adults 18–34, and Latinx audiences, where it produced the highest single-segment brand favorability result in the entire study. Meanwhile, the video without FIFA branding led the pack on broad brand-building and was the strongest competitive conquest tool—driving high purchase intent among American Express cardholders, the highest cross-brand competitive result in the test.
For marketers, this test emphasizes that a single piece of creative cannot serve every objective within a large, diverse campaign designed to reach multicultural audiences. The data makes the case for a deliberate two-creative strategy: leveraging the video for upper-funnel brand awareness and competitive conquest, and the branded still for lower-funnel conversion and audiences less engaged with soccer.
For brands running multimillion-dollar World Cup campaigns, that kind of creative-to-audience mapping—validated by creative pre-testing—is the difference between spending broadly and spending effectively.
Methodology:
Three RCT survey experiments (one for each brand) were conducted on Swayable over 24 hours between June 14-15, 2026, with responses from a total of 18,286 U.S. consumers. Questions were asked of a general population sample using Swayable’s proprietary online platform. Responses were screened using industry-standard quality control measures, including checks for attention, speeding, location verification, and demographic consistency, along with reCAPTCHA verification. Duplicate respondents are removed based on IP address and device fingerprinting.
The sample frame is U.S. smartphone users across the country with active internet connections who are users of popular mobile and web apps that make up Swayable’s network of respondent partners. Respondents are solicited from partner apps with non-monetary reward offers for their participation. Respondents were recruited with an approximately even ratio of men and women imposed via separate quotas for each. This is a “non-probability sample” (in the conventional terminology of public opinion research, although this team believes this concept is not meaningful since truly random sampling of the population is not possible via any methodology). To correct for over/under-sampling, all samples are post-stratified to the general U.S. population using cross-tabulations accounting for factors including age, ethnicity, gender, educational attainment, and geography, based on the latest available data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Swayable’s proprietary population modeling. Margins of error quoted are based on response distribution statistics and sample sizes and are calculated independently for each result. Access the survey questions here.
This research was conducted and self-funded by Swayable. Like all public opinion research, this study is subject to unmeasured sources of error that should be considered when interpreting the findings.