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Marketing Brew

Sports

Alyssa Meyers

marketingbrew.com

With the New York City Marathon on Sunday, pavement-pounding is set to reach a high throughout the city. But during weekend mornings in major cities around the country, you’d be hard-pressed to avoid crowds of runners getting their steps in together.

“If I’m in San Francisco any weekend morning, I cannot believe the number of running clubs that I’m seeing,” said Brooke Donberg, director of partnerships and activation at Clif Bar, which has 

The rising popularity of run clubs has helped transform the sport, once seen as a solitary act, into a social and social-media-ready activity. There are 

, run clubs hosted by DJs like Diplo and John Summit, and run clubs specifically for marathons; Carey Pinkowski, executive race director of the Chicago Marathon, said he saw “hundreds of runners” out and about on weekend mornings in the lead-up to the race earlier this month.

As online and IRL communities continue to crop up around running, marketers are taking note, looking for ways to lace up their own metaphorical sneakers and hit the ground, well, running.

“I think a lot of brands are seeing the opportunity, certainly the bigger ones, of ways that they can tap into quite a diverse group of people in terms of both runners and spectators,” Charlie Wade, chief content officer at VML Live and a runner himself who’s done work for clients around several races, told Marketing Brew.

Running gained significant steam during the pandemic. The sport “has always been popular, but niche,” and when gyms closed, many people looking to stay active found they had few other options, Christine Burke, the chief commercial officer for New York Road Runners (NYRR), the nonprofit behind the NYC Marathon, said.

That has led to surges in race sign-ups. While most NYRR races sold out about a month in advance in 2019, new races now typically fill up in a few hours, Burke said. The Boston 5K, which is held on Boston Marathon weekend, was at capacity in 21 minutes this year, according to Scott Stover, CMO of the Boston Athletic Association (BAA), the nonprofit that hosts the Boston Marathon.

“We’re seeing demand that we just can’t meet because of the restriction in terms of the size of our field,” he said.

That surge in participation is translating to sponsor interest, Burke said. A few weeks ahead of the New York City Marathon, floor space at the marathon expo was “essentially sold out,” she said, and this year, the marathon has six new official partners, including three non-endemic brands.

“We’re seeing more and more interest in the non-endemic space, with brands seeing the running community as a trend in overall health and wellness, and wanting to find meaningful and authentic ways to engage,” Burke said.

Some in the running space give run clubs partial credit for increasing interest in racing among participants and sponsors alike. Many running sponsors are drawn to the sport because of the extended timelines for connecting with athletes, but marathon sponsorships in particular typically hinge on one race day; run clubs can offer a “timeline extension” to “complement the type of big, tentpole investment” marketers make in official partnerships, said Zack Sugarman, SVP at Two Circles, which counts Ironman as a client and works with brands on endurance and marathon partnerships.

Sports brands including Clif Bar and Nike are already involved with run clubs, but many marketers are still trying to figure out how to best get a foot in the door, according to Stephanie Arpaia, VP of brand marketing at Excel Sports Management, which has worked on running activations for clients including the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) and Clif Bar.

Bank of America, the presenting sponsor of the Boston Marathon and title sponsor of the Chicago Marathon, is “still working through” ideas to supplement those activations, according to Brad Ross, who leads global marketing partnerships for the bank. The marketing team at Citizens, which became the official bank of NYRR in 2023, has also “started to think about” run clubs, Head of Marketing Lori Dillon said.

One surefire way that marathon sponsors are engaging with runners and race spectators is through branded cheer zones and other signage lining the courses on race days. Nike, which hosts its own races and has official partnerships with marathons like Portland and Chicago, places cheer zones and “cheeky” billboards where runners might need a boost the most, Seema Simmons, VP and general manager of Nike Running for North America, told us. At the Chicago Marathon, one bright red billboard along the course read “Shut up, brain”; at last year’s New York City Marathon, signage at the Staten Island Ferry, which runners used to get to the start line, read “Running is awful. I love it.”

Nike billboard at 2025 Chicago Marathon that says "Shut up, brain."

HSS, which has been a partner of NYRR since 2009, has shown up at races with cheer zones, hydration zones, and billboards, according to Jess Lefkowitz, an assistant VP who works on the hospital’s sports partnerships. The activations are meant to increase brand awareness and trust, and HSS is seeing those results, she said.

“I don’t see us going anywhere anytime soon,” Lefkowitz said. “It’s continued to help us build equity in the wellness and performance spaces.”

Awareness is also the goal for Citizens, Dillon said, and the brand clocked a 14% increase in consideration among New York-area runners from before the marathon in 2023 to after the marathon in 2024.

“It blew me away, quite frankly, how [much] that moved,” Dillon said. “What that meant was you couldn’t miss us.”

For many brands, charities are also a key component of marathon sponsorships: HSS and Citizens both work with NYRR to honor runners who race on behalf of charities, and for Bank of America, being associated with fundraising is a significant benefit of its marathon sponsorship, Ross said. Last year, runners of the Chicago marathon raised a record $36 million for charity.

“It goes beyond just the activation on the ground, which we do, which is table stakes,” Ross said. “It goes beyond just showing up with our logo…The ability to drive and raise revenue and some money for the charities is a big piece of the pie.”

Foot races give marketers access to captive audiences who are actually participating in the sport, as well as millions of spectators, making racing sponsorships fairly unique in the sports sponsorship space. But marathons may still lag behind some other sports when it comes to reaching TV audiences

“We’re still not quite there yet,” Arpaia said. “We’re starting to see some growth there as far as running events picking up more cultural mindshare or just being more relevant in culture…I’m looking out for, in the next five, 10, years, do we now start to open up an even a bigger lens as far as reaching more consumers that way?”

Reach isn’t always the biggest KPI for running sponsors, making TV viewership less of an issue for some brands. Simmons said her team at Nike is more concerned with creating products and experiences designed for runners, given the brand’s 

 in the sport. For Bank of America, running is about the “ability to go very deep” with a community, Ross said; the brand can get big reach elsewhere, like with its FIFA World Cup sponsorship, he added.

Even without the level of TV reach traditionally associated with major sports, demand for in-person participation seems to be enough to fuel growing interest in running sponsorships, and the need for speed (or just endurance) is showing no signs of slowing down.

“I would carry bibs in my pocket [on] race morning and hand them out,” Pinkowski said. “Now I get stopped in the grocery store and asked about access to the race.”

an overhead shot of runners on the 2024 NYC marathon course, surrounding by buildings and with the NYC skyline behind them

As run clubs surge, brands flock to marathon sponsorships 

Running, once seen as a grueling and solitary sport, now has a certain cachet, and marketers are lacing up their metaphorical sneakers.

Some nights in October and November have what is referred to as a sports equinox, when different leagues’ simultaneous playtimes leave American sports leagues fighting for the fleeting attention from fans. Amid NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL games, Major League Soccer is betting that star power and storytelling can drive viewers to its postseason games.

The league’s latest campaign, “All for the Cup,” stars actress, entrepreneur, and San Diego FC part-owner Issa Rae in a TV spot and social videos that focus on MLS rivalries. The content is meant to “make the postseason this must-watch national occasion,” CMO Radhika Duggal said.

“This year, we’re starting to really push into storytelling so that we can help our fans understand the rivalries and the players, and who the players really are,” Duggal told Marketing Brew. “You see that throughout the year, but it’s meant to culminate here.”

MLS rolled out the campaign on Oct. 21 with a 30-second 

 featuring moments of high drama from the season like goals, tackles, and celebrations, with Rae’s voice-over throughout. It’s set to run across MLS Season Pass on Apple TV, linear partner networks, and MLS-owned digital and social channels up until the MLS Cup Final on Dec. 6.

When Duggal joined the league last year, her team started redeveloping MLS’s brand strategy based on data and consumer insights, an 

 for Duggal from her pre-MLS days. They landed on the idea of “fun and entertainment” as a focal point for the brand, she said, themes that have been emphasized since the start of the season with campaigns like “

” starring Grammy-winner Doechii. “All for the Cup” is designed to follow that pattern while also spotlighting the high intensity and quality of play that happens during the postseason, Duggal said.

Beyond demonstrating the entertainment value of MLS, “All for the Cup” was designed as an invitation to draw new fans to the league, Duggal said, which is where Rae comes in. Rae has “credibility across multiple audiences” and is known as a “master storyteller” from her projects like the HBO show 

, Duggal said. Additionally, Rae is part of the ownership group of San Diego FC, which secured a spot in the playoffs this year during its first season of play, making her a natural fit for the campaign.

“It’s really hard to ever get anyone of that kind of stature [if] they don’t have some skin in the game,” she said. “It neither makes sense for the person, nor for the consumer, if the connection isn’t there.”

Rae is also fronting a three-part social series as part of the campaign to help the league reach fans who might not be watching sports on linear TV, and allows for retargeting, Duggal said. The social videos lean heavily into rivalries, which Duggal said builds on a research insight that those kinds of stories tend to drive fandom. In the first 

 of the series, for instance, Rae talks about San Diego v. Los Angeles, Miami v. Orlando, Portland v. Seattle, and Columbus v. Cincinnati team rivalries.

MLS has been growing its social footprint this year, increasing impressions on league and club accounts 17% year over year to about 13.7 billion, according to data shared by the league.

Between action shots of stars like Messi, cinematic clips like LA Galaxy mascot Cozmo lying in a field of confetti, and Rae’s wide-reaching audience appeal, Duggal said she hopes the campaign drives enough interest in MLS for people to not only watch the playoffs through the final over the next month and a half, but also get excited about the sport in general.

Recent viewership and attendance metrics from the regular season indicate they already are: Gross live match viewership on streaming and linear platforms increased 29% year over year to an average of 3.7 million viewers per week, and this season had the second-highest total match attendance in MLS history, according to the league.

With the FIFA World Cup coming to North America next summer, Duggal said her team is already “aggressively thinking about” their role in that event. She declined to share exactly what MLS has in the works for the tournament, but said upcoming campaigns will place some emphasis on individual clubs to target local markets.

“I’m super excited about this idea that we’re testing some of those tools and capabilities to measure, to invest smartly, to be very targeted, [and] to drive full-funnel fandom,” Duggal said. “We’re testing a lot of those tools in 2025 so that we’re set up to be successful with that bigger swing in 2026.”

Amid sports equinox, MLS bets rivalries and celebrity will drive viewership

The league tapped club part-owner Issa Rae for its postseason ad campaign, which leans into storytelling around players and team rivalries.

It’s no secret that sports fans love content about their favorite teams. These days, that doesn’t just mean live games on legacy TV networks.

Some major US leagues, it seems, are well aware. As football season kicked off, the NFL inked a content partnership deal with sports newsletter and media company The Gist, plugging the league directly into The Gist’s 

, many of whom are millennial and Gen Z women. Earlier this week, The Gist announced a similar content deal with the NWSL.

Both partnerships are designed not only to serve the media startup’s audience with deep dives into their favorite sports, but also to drive fandom for the leagues beyond the audiences they’ve already been reaching for years, The Gist co-founders Jacie deHoop and Ellen Hyslop told Marketing Brew.

“We really saw that traditional sports media was very much focused on an avid male sports fan, and we really felt like there was an opportunity for us to engage with this next-generation female fan and create a community and create a media platform for her,” Hyslop said. “We knew that this audience…was going to be valuable to the teams and to the leagues that wanted to reach her, but didn’t necessarily have the right way.”

Both the NFL and NWSL were, according to deHoop, “dream partners” for The Gist, which was founded in late 2017 as a sports newsletter covering men’s and women’s sports equally. The NFL, which is the biggest league in the US, could have easily “laughed in our faces,” deHoop said, but she said league execs were “open and receptive” when talks started at the Super Bowl this year.

For The Gist’s readers, the NFL is their “No. 1 favorite sport,” according to Hyslop. Through the partnership, subscribers will have access to more NFL content, including a 

 that allows participants to guess which team will win each matchup of the season for the chance to win prizes.

“Women are so often left out of any fantasy league, the office pool, the survivor pool, and a big reason why we want to be that source is because we actually want to create a community where they feel welcome,” Hyslop said. For its part, the NFL, she said, gets to “continue to grow and lean into that female fandom.”

To further support the content partnership, The Gist will also up its presence and coverage around NFL tentpoles like the draft and the Super Bowl, Hyslop added; earlier this year, Gist staffers 

 the Super Bowl in person through a partnership with Verizon.

For Servi Barrientos, director of media partnerships at the NWSL, working with The Gist opens an avenue not just to acquire new fans, but to turn casual fans into avid ones through storytelling, he said.

On one level, Barrientos said he hopes to see the partnership drive game tune-in, which could also stand to benefit the league’s legacy media partners, including CBS, ESPN, Prime Video, and Scripps Sports. The Gist’s support will mean even more media coverage for the league, he added, keeping it in the news cycle more often than just during major games.

“We want to make sure that fans know where to find us and where to watch the game,” Barrientos said. “It’s important to have the right storytellers to be able to tell these stories of not only the players, but the leagues themselves, and continue to put out content…We live in a digital world now. The more content, the better.”

On a deeper level, Barrientos said he thinks that content can help create league superfans. The NWSL is giving The Gist an “inside look” at the league and access to players with the intention of driving more emotional stories that can “turn fans into passionate fans or avids,” he said.

Increased content coming out of the partnerships also opens up more branded content opportunities, which could benefit The Gist and the leagues. League sponsors already have access to tentpole moments like championship games; now, The Gist can cover those same moments more deeply and offer that content up to its brand partners, deHoop said. Meanwhile, new content, like the pick ’em challenge, is also sponsorable real estate.

“It gives our marketing partners an opportunity to extend their programming,” Barrientos said.

The content partnerships represent more than an opportunity for brands to target 

 sports fans—they open the door for marketers to tap into content that’s geared toward modern fans.

“Audiences are changing; their relationship with fandom is changing,” Hyslop said. “The folks at all of these leagues…are recognizing what they need to be doing to set up the league for success five, 10, 15 years down the line.”

NFL, NWSL are looking to reach next-gen fans with new media partnerships

Content deals with sports media startup The Gist come as both leagues look to reach millennial and Gen Z women fans.

FC Barcelona sits atop the La Liga rankings. And Spotify sits atop FC Barcelona—or at least on the team’s jerseys and facilities.

For the past three seasons, the audio company has been the Spanish soccer club’s main partner as part of a long-term deal that includes a front-of-kit sponsorship and stadium naming rights, among other assets.

But it’s not always the Spotify brand that appears on the Barça jerseys.

, Alex Norström, the company’s co-president and chief business officer, hinted in a statement at the time that Spotify was considering using the jersey real estate to highlight various artists and their brands. Since then, Spotify has swapped its own branding out on the jerseys for logos associated with major artists, like Drake’s company October’s Very Own and Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack brand.

Though Spotify occasionally removes itself from the Barça kits, VP of Marketing and Partnerships Marketing Marc Hazan said the sponsorship has proven invaluable for driving buzz for the brand.

“If I wanted to create cultural noise like we do with some of these things that we do, like Travis Scott, could you even do that without this [jersey asset]? I don’t think you could,” Hazan told Marketing Brew at Cannes Lions. “If you were trying to do that yourself, it would be very difficult and probably very expensive…So to us, it’s an unbelievable, unique platform for artists to showcase their work that can’t really be done anywhere else.”

 When the possibility of working with Barça crossed Hazan’s desk, Spotify wasn’t in the market for a sports sponsorship, he said. But the opportunity involved the team’s full suite of rights—including placement on both the men’s and women’s jerseys, as well as the training center and stadium naming rights—so Spotify went all in, according to Hazan.

“Spotify has never undertaken a partnership at this scale before,” Norström said in the announcement post.

While the tie-up was perhaps unexpected, the Spotify team was nevertheless convinced that it would result in worthwhile activations like the artist jersey partnerships, Hazan told us. Spotify kicked off the initiative with Drake in 2022 to celebrate him becoming the first artist to reach 50 billion streams on the platform, and has since partnered with artists including ROSALÍA, The Rolling Stones, Karol G, and Coldplay.

 One of the KPIs Hazan said he considers for the sponsorship is relative media value, and with a rabid, global fandom, Barça delivers in spades on that front, he said. Buzz is also especially important when it comes to the jersey takeovers. When Spotify put a limited number of the Travis Scott Barça jerseys up for sale—1899, to be exact, in honor of the year the team was founded—they sold out quickly, he said. Beyond that, he said, streams of Travis Scott songs increased by 40% following the Barça activation.

“The [number of] impressions that we get for these takeovers has just gone up and up and up and up and over time, and that’s now started to translate to on-platform activity,” Hazan said.

The activations even seem to supersede La Liga team rivalries; when Karol G performed at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, where Real Madrid plays, shortly after her Barça takeover, Hazan said he didn’t 

 anyone was put out (although when it comes to fandom, one can never be too sure there are no hard feelings).

 Hazan didn’t indicate any immediate intentions to stretch into other leagues, but he said he’s eager to work more closely with the athletes on FC Barcelona Femení and to tap into the iconic Spotify Camp Nou stadium, which is expected to reopen in September after renovations are complete.

“Each one of these takeovers has grown and grown and grown in terms of scope and opportunity,” Hazan said. “We will continue to push ourselves…because we believe there’s so much more to go.”

Update 06/24/25: This story has been edited to update Marc Hazan's title.

Side by side photo collage of Spotify's partnership with FC Barcelona featuring Travis Scott.

Behind the scenes of Spotify’s partnership with FC Barcelona

Three years into a wide-ranging sponsorship of the Spanish soccer club, Spotify’s VP of marketing and partnerships reflects on how it’s come to life, from jersey takeovers to naming rights.

It’s Cannes Lions Day 3! Halfway through. Time flies when you’re drinking rosé by the bottle on the beach.

I think I’m running on about eight hours of sleep total since touching down in France (and my Garmin watch is absolutely furious with me), but the late bedtime was especially worth it last night to catch one of Spotify’s iconic Cannes concerts. Alex Warren, Royel Otis, and sombr put on a great show, so it was worth missing out on some z’s. Sorry, Garmin.

I was back at Spotify Beach by 9am today to chat with a couple of their execs about the company’s 

 with FC Barcelona and some of its latest ad-tech innovations (although to be honest, it was way too early in the morning to hear terms like “programmatic” and “DSP”). Next stop was Stagwell’s Sport Beach, where I camped out for a few hours to listen to Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird do a live taping of their podcast, 

, with Tara Davis-Woodhall and Hunter Woodhall. I also heard Mercedes F1 driver (and the most recent winner of the Canadian Grand Prix) George Russell speak about tech and the team’s work with 

. This just in: George’s hair looks just as incredible in person as it does on TV.

Before that, I caught up with Sebastian Tomich, CCO of The Athletic, who’s been spending his time talking with brand marketers about the publication’s newest products—like 

, a new vertical that covers sports leadership and personal development—and content plans, including for next summer’s FIFA World Cup. While it’s still a year away, some sports execs across 

, agencies, and brands are already in planning mode.

 Spotify, for taking on first-coffee-provider duty, plus having the most air-conditioned room I’ve ever experienced. Bonus points to Qualcomm CMO Don McGuire and Russell for tossing some autographed hats into the crowd. (I fought someone for one and came out victorious, bringing my combat-sports record to a perfect 2-0.)

 Google Calendar’s Time Insights feature, which is telling me I have 17 hours of meetings and panels on my calendar for the week. That is simply none of my business, Google Calendar. (Also, me, for announcing my deep McLaren fandom yesterday but walking around in a Mercedes hat today.)

Alex Warren performs on stage at Spotify Beach concert featuring Royel Otis, sombr & Alex Warren at Spotify Beach during Cannes Lions 2025 on June 17, 2025 in Cannes, France

Cannes 2025: Back to the (Spotify) beach 

A year out, there are already early conversations about the World Cup. 

You might not know Lewis Hamilton in real life. But you can always (try to) connect with him on LinkedIn.

The Ferrari F1 driver is among a larger influx of athletes who have joined the platform in the past five years or so, according to Laura Lorenzetti, LinkedIn’s senior director and executive editor of global editorial. The trend started largely among retired athletes as they moved onto the next stage of their careers, Lorenzetti said, but athletes on the platform now include current pros. In addition to Hamilton, Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry and tennis star Sloane Stephens are both on the platform, as are a number of college athletes.

“They are ultimately business people,” Lorenzetti told Marketing Brew. “They are professionals. Their first career is going to be their sport, [but] it is not going to be their last career. They are super savvy, and they understand that they need to be setting themselves up for whatever comes next, and they’re starting to do that earlier and earlier.”

We spoke with Lorenzetti to unpack why athletes are leveraging LinkedIn and what it means for the players and platform.

 has given modern athletes more control over their own brands and storytelling than ever before, and LinkedIn is no exception; Lorenzetti said one reason she thinks athletes have been using the platform is to break news about their careers themselves, as opposed to relying on more typical methods like press releases.

 his move from Mercedes to Ferrari on LinkedIn in a post that included the hashtag #newjob. Stephens, who hasn’t been competing lately due to injury, recently used the platform to 

 that she’d be covering this year’s French Open as part of the TNT Sports team.

“For these big-name celebrities, they themselves are brands,” Lorenzetti said. “You want to continue to position yourself as the leader, to be seen in a positive light, to be going directly to the consumer.”

Another reason why some current and former athletes may want to embrace LinkedIn: many of them are also no strangers to investing in—or starting their own—companies. Tom Brady 

 the merger of his fan loyalty platform Autograph with fitness platform Future on the platform, Carmelo Anthony 

 his wine company and entrepreneurship, Alex Morgan 

 the news about her move from San Diego Wave player to investor, and San Antonio Spurs point guard Chris Paul recently 

 to help spread the word about his new production company.

In at least one instance, an athlete says they used LinkedIn to help land their next gig. Stone Garrett, an American baseball player who currently plays professionally in South Korea, 

 on his profile that LinkedIn helped him get his spot on the MLB team the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2021.

LinkedIn isn’t just about entrepreneurship or business deals, and it’s common for athletes to post about wins, losses, and lessons on the platform. When Rafael Nadal 

 on his time playing at the French Open, he racked up more than 1,000 comments and more than 800 reposts, and retired six-time NBA All-Star Pau Gasol received hundreds of reactions on a 

 about an award he received for work done through his foundation.

As any athlete knows, though, sports isn’t all about wins. Alpine ski racer Lindsey Vonn recently got vulnerable on LinkedIn, 

 about a fall she took during a race. That kind of post is something of a “sweet spot” in terms of the content the LinkedIn team tries to cultivate, said Katherine O’Hara, a group manager for the platform.

“She’s taking us behind the curtain,” O’Hara said. “She’s sharing something that she learned, and that then, in fact, helps someone who might be going through a similar setback in their career.”

In general, athlete posts “definitely get outsized engagement and conversation,” Lorenzetti said, since “people are hungry to engage” with pro athletes. While Lorenzetti and her team do offer athletes and their teams tips on how to best make use of LinkedIn, she said that largely, she’d like to see the trend of athletes using the platform progress naturally.

“Once you get a few key people, they’re all watching each other,” she said. “The minute 

 on here talking about his business and what’s coming next, Carmelo’s team is calling up…We definitely see athletes watching other athletes and taking cues from each other.”

Collaged images of different celebrities on LinkedIn.

Athletes’ next social media platform of choice? LinkedIn

“Their first career is going to be their sport, [but] it is not going to be their last career,” one LinkedIn exec said.

Jasmine Sheena

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 

, 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.”

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.”

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.

Telemundo will also leverage its buzzy new show, 

 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.

 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 

 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.”