The 2026 World Cup, hosted across cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico, is drawing billions of viewers. But some of the brands generating the most attention online are not paying for official tournament sponsorships.
According to CNBC, companies like Levi Strauss & Co., Taco Bell and Texas-based convenience store chain Buc-ee's captured significant social media attention even before the tournament's first match on June 11. Some earned that attention through deliberate marketing campaigns. Others benefited simply from the flood of international players and fans arriving in host cities.
Official sponsors include Adidas, Coca-Cola and Qatar Airways. Marketing research firm WARC Media estimated that advertising spending on this year's World Cup will reach $10.5 billion. That figure sits just below the roughly $12.6 billion spent during the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
The gap between sponsors and non-sponsors shows up most clearly in engagement numbers. Market intelligence firm Meltwater tracked that in the ramp-up to the tournament, non-sponsor brand collaborations generated nearly double the engagement of official sponsors, reaching roughly 61 million engagements versus just 33 million for official sponsors. Since the tournament began, non-sponsor brands have surpassed 57,000 mentions on social media versus just over 43,000 for official sponsors.
Meltwater also found that while sponsored advertisements led in volume, distribution and creative quality helped propel non-sponsors to higher engagement. The most social media engagement came from TikTok.
Lego stood out among non-sponsors by a wide margin. The construction toy company accounted for 82% of the top 50 most engaging non-sponsor posts across social media platforms, according to Meltwater. Among official sponsors, Coca-Cola and Adidas together accounted for half of all sponsor mentions during the buildup. But in the final 11 days before the first match, McDonald's pulled ahead sharply, with its engagement share rising from 2.6% to 23%.
McDonald's also marked the tournament with limited-time menu items and cups. Taco Bell launched a new campaign designed to support fans whether their team won or lost. Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower told CNBC that overall World Cup advertising spend increased 42% week over week in the days leading up to the first game, with both Taco Bell and Duracell among brands that increased spending in recent weeks.
Still, the top 10 World Cup advertisers by spend over the past three months have been sponsors or broadcast partners of the event, Sensor Tower said.
Meltwater CEO John Box told CNBC that the dynamics of this tournament signal a broader shift in how brands can compete. "A big takeaway from this World Cup is that you don't need an official sponsorship to own the cultural moment anymore," Box said. "The brands that will win the next tournament aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets, but instead the ones who are set up to see what's trending in real time, the creativity to connect it back to your brand, and the speed to act before the moment passes."
