Coca-Cola and Visa show what World Cup sponsorship ROI looks like

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TL;DR:

Coca-Cola and Visa turned World Cup sponsorship into clearer commercial gains, while McDonald’s missed campaign expectations and Adidas absorbed higher activation costs. The results show why sponsorship ROI depends less on visibility than on measurable sales, transactions and demand.

Article:

The 2026 FIFA World Cup produced a split-screen lesson in sponsorship ROI: Coca-Cola and Visa reported measurable commercial lift around their activations, while McDonald’s admitted its June FIFA campaign missed internal expectations and Adidas showed how a strong tournament can still carry a heavy marketing bill. The takeaway for sports marketers is simple: reach is not the return; the return is what the brand can connect to transactions, volume or durable demand.

Coca-Cola said World Cup activation contributed to 5% quarterly growth for Trademark Coca-Cola, its strongest volume growth in 17 years excluding the pandemic recovery period. Companywide Q2 net revenue rose 7% to $13.4 billion. Visa offered an even cleaner commerce link: cross-border volume rose 13%, while card-present transactions increased as much as 20% in select US host cities on match days. Portfolio manager David Wagner summed up the quarter: “people kept spending, and spending more than Wall Street expected.”

Adidas complicates any neat winner-loser table. Currency-neutral revenue rose 14% to a record €6.7 billion, DTC sales jumped 25%, and operating profit increased 5% to €574 million. But the company also spent €212 million more on marketing, much of it tied to World Cup campaigns and activations. That makes the short-term ROI harder to isolate, even though commercial momentum was strong.

McDonald’s had the clearest execution gap. Global comparable sales rose 1.3% and US comparable sales just 0.8%. Management said value execution accounted for about two-thirds of US traffic underperformance; the remainder was largely attributable to the June FIFA campaign, which lifted business but “underperformed versus our expectations.”

For CMOs, the 2026 World Cup is a measurement warning: sponsorship value rises when the activation sits close to the purchase, payment or product. Brand heat matters, but the scoreboard eventually moves to sales, traffic and margin.