HOW TO CREATE A 2026 WORLD CUP WINNING SHOPPER ACTIVATION
- Juice
- Sep 1
- 9 min read
Updated: Sep 4
Contents
Introduction Our experience & insights of previous tournament impact.
Deciding if your brand should be playing Brand & event relevance, minimise risk of failure.
Know your winning tactics Strategy, mechanics, partnerships, execution and more.
Conclusion We sum it all up.
Introduction
As the big summer sports events come to an end, we look back at how brands strengthened their brand awareness in-store and increase their value to shoppers by activating promotions and increasing store-presence during big cultural moments.
Over recent years we’ve had a big increase in shopper promotional activations for big cultural moments such as; The 2024 Paris Olympics, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, Superman, and most recently the 2025 Women’s Euro’s. This has led us to gain a great deal of insights from a brand and agency perspective, as well as an increased awareness of how other brands approach such events.
We've put together our thoughts and insights on what will make a successful shopper activation for the 2026 World Cup. Now you can get ahead of the competition and win your category in-store.
Pre Match Analysis
When England squared off against France in the 2022 FIFA World Cup quarter-final, UK supermarkets registered their highest single-day beer sales of the year”. [1]
Yes, even topping peak Christmas performance. Fast-forward to Euro 2024: during the period of England matches, grocery visits rose 2%, with beer sales surging 13% and crisps and snacks climbing 5% compared to the month before [2]. These figures reveal how football fever literally carries shoppers into stores and into beer and snack aisles.
Here’s a few more compelling stats:
Sales including beer, snacking and frozen increased in supermarkets by 18% during the 2024 European Championships [3]
Snacking categories generated an extra £4 million in supermarket sales during the 2024 European Championships [3]
Across four major supermarkets in the UK, frozen pizza sales rose by 16% during Euro 2024 [4]
51.22 million unique viewers across the tournament and 5bn reach across all media [5]
The insights show that shoppers are choosing cost-saving and convenience over watching sporting events at their local. This points to more opportunity for family’s connecting, which may be interesting for brands to tap into that.
The 2026 World Cup
Deciding if your brand should be playing
As shown from the stats, an event like the 2026 World Cup brings with it; huge awareness, excitement and opportunities to connect with new audiences, strengthen existing audience-brand bonds, and opportunity to deliver year-defining financial results. Before you get stuck straight in, there’s some things you consider before you get the ball rolling.
Is it relevant to your brand?
Is the 2026 World Cup relevant to your brand? Sometimes it’s better to do nothing rather than doing the wrong thing. Sometimes the risk of harming your brand reputation and losing trust of loyal fans isn’t worth the potential rewards.
Budweiser - Official Beer Sponsors of the Fifa 2022 Qatar World Cup - had the rug pulled from under them by Qatari authorities, who banned alcohol sales inside stadiums, dashing their core activation plan. Stock diversion and PR damage control was in full force as they tried to save their reputation and minimise negative financial implications. Something that could have been avoided with some consideration to cultural relevance.
Adidas faced criticism of ‘sportswashing’ for their “Impossible is Nothing” campaign in the wake of Qatar’s human rights controversies, Hyundai was accused of ‘greenwashing’ against the backdrop of carbon emissions and migrant labour rights, and BrewDog were slated for being hypocrites when they launched an “Anti-Sponsorship” stunt, yet they still sold their beers in Qatar.
Know your fans?
Aligning marketing and promotions with what your target audience is important for activation success. Knowing their proffered prizes and way to enter will dramatically increase promotion participation. Market research can be a great driver for getting clear about what will achieve winning results and answer the question 'does our audience care about this'. Find out and you'll be thanking yourself whether you're participate or not. It may even unearth ideas for alternative or future events and marketing opportunities.
Is it 'worth' it?
Big events like the World Cup can bring can give you credibility, guaranteed visibility, and use of official assets and exclusivity, but the price tag can be eye-watering, and you’re one of many sponsors in a crowded field. In most cases, impact is often more about scale than originality, though in-store definitely rewards those who stand out. It's worth weighing up how much you want to invest and what metric constitutes a successful ROI. Working with a creative team can help you unlock the most effective creative solutions for maximum scale and visibility for your budget.
Know your winning tactics
Want to pull up your socks and get your game-face on? Here’s 5 of our best tips for creating a successful in-store activation for the 2026 World Cup.
Get Ahead of the Rest
Now is a good time to start. With retailer buy-ins, partnership negotiations, sponsorship deals, creative development and implementation, starting early will give you the best opportunity to be prepared to take on all the moving formations that a big sporting event activation brings. Here's some things we've experienced over the years that can run down the clock:
Internal Alignment Whether it’s a single or multi-brand approach, all brands and teams need to be playing from the same team sheet. Each brand has different objectives and audiences so agreement on decisions can take time to get right. Deciding your route of attack early help avoid challenges later in the project.
Brand Partnerships
Beyond taking time to agree terms (which also takes time), the brand you partner with will also have ideas on creative direction. This is why it's important to partner with brands that align with your mission and values, as well as getting agreements on how much say they have on design. It's also a good idea to keep the brand in the loop at each stage to avoid any last minute changes that could put pressure on deadlines.
Team/Governing Body/Player Partnerships
When bringing partnerships into an activation it can be great for reaching new audiences, elevating brand presence, and creating unique and exciting content that offers more value to fans. These partners will have their own ideas, rules and guidelines, which can mean more time taken at each stage of the process. Working relationships take time to navigate, plus the additional layers of feedback, communication and sign-off all add to the complexity. Organisation, deadlines and constant communication it key to keeping the project moving in the right direction.
Kit Sponsors
If you decide on a sponsorship route that utilises the benefits of a Team Partnership, this can throw up unique challenges when it comes to the Kit Sponsor. Last minute supplying of kits can make for heavy retouching, colour adjustments, logo placement and limitations with graphic elements, are all part of the package. Some brands choose to commit to going with last year's kit, or no team affiliation at all, to avoid the uncertainty and added barriers. This again comes with pros and cons, so it's worth weighing up what's most important to you in achieving the best activation result.
Exclusive Prizes & Mechanics
Deciding prizes can sometimes take some time to refine, however: different retailer exclusive add-ons, gamification mechanics and money-can't-buy prizes that can end up being more time intensive. There's also a lot of working parts with multiple teams and agencies involved in bringing different aspects of the activation to life with consistency. Organising an initial call to get the team gelling together, with check-ins throughout the project are great for keeping everyone informed and efficient.
Retailer Sell-ins
Knowing what major retailers want from brands is a great way to avoid losing time or potential store position. Through the years we've learned what each retailer likes to offer their shoppers, so knowing this going in will increase your chances for efficient and effective buy-in.
Deciding your Campaign Direction
Choosing the right campaign direction is tricky, especially with all of the different options and variations that can help you engage shoppers. We've broken down some of the main campaign types, with pros and cons to make deciding your shopper activation approach a little easier.
Team / Governing Body Partnership
Pros | Cons |
✅ High trust and legitimacy | ❌ Increased Cost |
✅ Align brand with national excitement | ❌ Creative freedom restricted |
✅ Official logos, kits, merch, and team narrative | ❌ Limited to one team’s journey (risks if early exit) |
✅ Promotional Prize Pull |
Tournament Partnership Promotion
Pros | Cons |
✅ Massive reach and guaranteed event attention | ❌ Increased Cost |
✅ Association with the moment, without picking a side | ❌ Creative freedom restricted |
✅ Multi-team, national and star player possibilities | ❌ Reduced impact of national pride |
✅ Official prizes (eg. Finals Tickets) |
Player Partnership Promotion
Pros | Cons |
✅ Increased engagement and awareness with shoppers due to player profile | ❌ Risk of injury, scandal or poor performance |
✅ Unique prize offering | ❌ Players may be limited in branding rights (conflicts) |
✅ Increased Creative Flexibility | ❌ Reduced national engagement |
Brand Partnership
Pros | Cons |
✅ Shared and reduced cost with broader access to shopper channels | ❌ Increased complexity to align creative and branding equally amongst brands |
✅ Tap into new Target Audiences & increased awareness | ❌ Possible negative audience reaction if the partnership falls flat or doesn't connect |
✅ Tap into big moment without alienation | ❌ Lacks official team and player pull |
✅ Retailer buy-in | ❌ Risk of generic, watered-down message |
On-pack Promotion
Pros | Cons |
✅ Increased campaign and event visibility | ❌ Risk of generic, watered-down message |
✅ Increased chance to convert at shelf | ❌ Increased cost of printing |
✅ Scalable across all retailers | ❌ Post-event packs can feel dated and may have to be discounted to clear. |
✅ Increased chances of mechanic engagement | |
✅ Opportunity to create new product lines that link to the moment |
No Partnerships
Pros | Cons |
✅ Reduced costs | ❌ Lower cultural impact |
✅ Complete creative freedom | ❌ Idea needs to work harder and be stronger to create an engaging campaign |
✅ Focus on the sport moment and connecting with fans through creative | ❌ No star power or value incentives to entice purchase beyond competitors |
❌ Possible backlash if the campaign feels like piggybacking, audiences can see it as opportunistic |
Pick the Right Type of Promotion
Money-can't-buy prizes, money off, or no promotion at all? Here's when it works and some of the risks involved to make your decision making a little easier.
Prize Promotion
When it works Great for brands to become the no-brainer choice in a competitive category where price is on-par.
Risk Over-complicated prize mechanics, uninspiring prizes, perception of win chance and lack of scale can mean lower participation.
Execution tip Keep it frictionless. A QR on-pack, simple mobile entry, and instant-win mechanics tend to perform the best. Let insights lead prizes. Knowing what your audience want from promotions and implementing it will put you in a winning position. Make sure you stand out. Make sure your creative is clear and attention grabbing, if shoppers don't see it, they won't participate.
Value Promotion
When it works Perfect for brands that have regular purchases and great to get buy-in from retailers through supermarket loyalty cards. Multi-buy offers, price reductions, or bundle deals are the most effective money-value promotions beyond cash giveaways (though this isn't possible in every category). This strategy leans into the insight that tournaments drive group occasions at home.
Risk Devalues the brand if overused as you become known for discounting rather than creating memorable activations and added value.
Execution tip Combine value with context. For example, “Be match-day ready” bundles linked directly to big match occasions will resonate better than generic money-saving messaging.
No Promotion
When it works If your brand’s positioning is premium, heritage-driven, or rooted in authenticity, sometimes presence is enough. Think Guinness sponsoring rugby: the event does the heavy lifting, Guinness just has to show up and execute well.
Risk Being invisible. Without an activation, even a relevant brand can lose salience during noisy events as other brands invest big and reap the rewards for standing out.
Execution tip Invest in distinctive assets: memorable look and feel, limited edition pack design and POS theatre. This helps you feel like you're taking part, even without a sales mechanic focus.
Executing on Excitement
Promotions can bring shoppers to the shelf, but creative execution decides if they pick you up and take you home.
Visual Theatre
Tournament tie-ins work best when the product feels fully kitted up. Attention-grabbing front of store displays, bold aisle take-overs and playful engagement pieces create lasting excitement and attention stealing opportunities.
Gamification
Football lends itself perfectly to adding play to your creative approach. Want to get fans coming back for more? Make participation fun and addictive. Some retailers also love it when brands do this to offer an exclusive element for their shoppers.
Player Power
Athlete ambassadors or team associations make campaigns feel authentic to the moment. If you have the budget, it's a great way to get instant validation from fans.
Excitement isn’t one stunt; it’s a Mexican-Wave that builds across the tournament.
Think beyond in-store
In-store is your pair of safe hands but tournament activations hit harder when they’re part of a 360° strategy. Social Media Amplification, PR Storytelling and Engagement Pieces all help to bring the campaign to life, making sure that your brand is number one on the shopping list.
Conclusion
Big sporting moments like the upcoming World Cup aren’t just games, they’re cultural events that drive shoppers, spark excitement, and create unmissable opportunities for brands. But relevance, creativity, and integration are key: jump in the wrong way, and you risk wasted budget, damage to reputation and missed opportunities.
Whether it’s prize promotions, brand partnerships, or bold on-pack activations, the winners will be the brands that plan early, know their audience, and execute meaningfully and effectively for maximum impact.
Ready to make your 2026 World Cup campaign fit for match day? Get in touch, and let’s make sure your brand scores big.
SOURCES
thegrocer.co.uk
newfoodmagazine.com
fieldmarketing.com
nationalworld.com
inside.fifa.com
