By the time The FIFA World Cup kicks off on June 11, 2026, we’ll have the next Knives Out mystery. We’ll (probably) know TikTok’s fate in the US. We might even have the next Rihanna album.
In other words, next June may seem far off—but that’s not stopping Telemundo from rolling out its World Cup marketing now to promote that the Spanish-language broadcast of the competition will air on the network. (Fox has the rights to the English-language broadcast.) As interest in watching live sports continues to explode, the NBCU-owned network is upping the ante on its World Cup promotional efforts a year in advance to help build buzz for the tournament that will be jointly hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico.
It’ll all kick off today, exactly one year before the World Cup begins, with a live soccer match held on a floating barge off the coast of Miami, which itself will mark the beginning of multiple days of festivities. At Cannes Lions next week, NBCU execs will also tout their efforts around the World Cup. And as the tournament gets closer, there will be local marketing, experiential events, and other promotional efforts, including through Telemundo programming, with marketing featured across NBCU platforms to further promote the broadcast.
Planning around the event began over a year ago, Joaquin Duro, Telemundo EVP of sports, said, and the whole operation has been like “building a Lego [set] with 1,000 pieces.”
And so it begins
Today’s kickoff game will include two teams of three players, with soccer creators on hand to film content promoting the match, according to Mónica Gil, EVP and chief administrative and marketing officer at Telemundo.
The campaign, dubbed “El Mundial es Nuestro” (“The World Cup is Ours”), will kick off with a spot that will air across social, digital, linear, and owned channels in 90-, 60-, and 30-second versions. The ad features people in different places, like at home or at a bar, experiencing emotional highs and lows while watching soccer on TV.
In crafting the ad, the team “really focused on a few things, one that for Latinos, the FIFA World Cup…really is more than just a tournament,” Gil told Marketing Brew. “In this case, specifically, it really is a homecoming, if you will. Soccer is ingrained in our culture, it’s passed down through generations, making this moment something that is very deeply personal.”
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After the kickoff, Telemundo is planning a local-first approach to its World Cup campaign, she said. With 11 cities in the US hosting World Cup soccer matches, the company is considering hosting experiential activations in key cities like Miami, New York, and Los Angeles. It’s also planning to work with local NBC stations in those cities to further market the games.
Hip and happenin’
Telemundo will also leverage its buzzy new show, El Pelotazo to help build World Cup hype, Gil said. The show, which debuted in March, discusses all things sports in short segments that resemble a social feed, Duro said, and its programming style lends itself to use on Telemundo’s social accounts.
El Pelotazo will be instrumental in covering the World Cup kickoff festivities and will have a presence on Telemundo’s FAST channel, Telemundo Deportes Ahora, which will roll out in August, Duro said. The company is currently creating more than eight hours of live content each day, and Telemundo Deportes Ahora has already attracted the interest of advertisers, Duro said.
Given that the World Cup will also air on Peacock, Telemundo has plans to leverage NBCU Symphony, Comcast’s cross-platform advertising program, to promote its campaign, too, Gil said.
That could work in its favor: NBCU will reach 286 million viewers each month, NBCU’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships, Mark Marshall, told advertisers at the company’s upfront presentation last month. According to Telemundo statistics, 66% of NBCU viewers say they’re “very excited” about the 2026 World Cup, compared to 53% in 2022, when the World Cup was held in Qatar.
Out of those surveyed, more than half said they prefer the Spanish-language version of the telecast over the English-language version.
“While English may capture attention, Spanish captures emotion,” Gil said. “Some things are better in Spanish, and soccer is just one of them.”