FIFA World Cup 2026: What's drawing Indian brands beyond the pitch?

The FIFA World Cup 2026 kicked off in Mexico City with 48 teams, 104 matches and six weeks of football spread across three host nations, the biggest edition in the tournament's history. India is not one of those 48 teams. India has never qualified for a FIFA World Cup. And yet, over the next 39 nights, Indian living rooms will be lit up by football anyway, and Indian brands have committed hundreds of crores to ensure their logos are part of that picture.

Zee Entertainment Enterprises has emerged as the centrepiece of this bet. The broadcaster secured exclusive FIFA broadcast and streaming rights in India through 2034, covering a portfolio of 39 tournaments over eight years, reportedly valued at less than $60 million. On the back of that deal, Zee has already onboarded over a dozen brands across categories as varied as auto, FMCG, BFSI, beverages, technology and lifestyle, running the campaign across its newly launched sports channel bouquet Unite8 Sports and its streaming platform Zee5. Mahindra has come on as Co-Presenting Sponsor and Diageo as Co-Powered By Sponsor, with Apple, Pernod Ricard and Mondelez also part of the line-up.

The scale argument

Strip away the football and what brands are really buying into is a media event of rare concentration, a moment when, despite the fragmentation of OTT and social feeds, millions of people are watching the same thing at the same time. That, more than any romantic notion of the sport itself, is the commercial logic driving this wave of sign-ons.

“I don't think Indian brands are investing in the FIFA World Cup to build global cultural relevance,” said Ashish Khazanchi, Managing Partner, Enormous Brands. “If that were the objective, they would be advertising in markets that deliver a truly global audience. The value of a property like the World Cup lies in its ability to aggregate audiences. In a world where appointment viewing has largely disappeared because of OTT and social media, these are among the few occasions when millions of people are watching at the same time and seeing the same advertisements.”

For Khazanchi, this is not a football story at all; it is the same story that explains why brands chase IPL slots or set up stalls at the Mahakumbh.

“For most brands, the attraction isn't the sport itself, and it isn't even the experience. What matters is that there are a lot of people watching simultaneously. That's what creates a media opportunity,” he explained. “The same principle applies to the IPL. For many advertisers, the draw isn't cricket; it's the audience that cricket delivers. Sports events, reality shows, and other major media properties are valuable because they bring together large audiences at a single moment in time, and brands can engage with them collectively. It's similar to why brands participate in something like the Mahakumbh. It's not necessarily because they have a religious affiliation. It's because 36 crore people gather there, and opportunities to communicate with that many people at once are extremely rare. The FIFA World Cup works in much the same way. For advertisers, the real value lies in the scale and concentration of the audience rather than the sport itself.”

The Game of Numbers 

Globally, FIFA is chasing a record $9 billion in revenue from this edition, even as the expansion to 48 teams added 47% more match inventory and pulled per-match rights value down by 19%. In India, FIFA is understood to have targeted a media rights package worth around $100 million. Zee Entertainment stepped in just over a week before the tournament began, locking in a ten-year multi-event package through 2034 for an estimated $35 - 40 million.

“48 teams. 104 matches. Three countries. Six weeks. It is the biggest tournament in history. But for the Indian sports media industry, the real action isn't on the pitch. It is a masterclass in shifting economics that demands a careful read,” said Rajesh Sethi, Partner and Sector Leader – Media, Entertainment and Sports, PwC. “A nation of 1.4 billion. 110 million digital fans. And the dominant market leaders passed. That is not just a tough negotiation but is a structural verdict driven by three forces.”

The first of those forces is timing. With matches kicking off between midnight and 3:30 AM IST, there is simply no premium prime-time inventory to monetise in a market where the advertising-led OTT model depends entirely on appointment viewing during waking hours. The second is cricket's gravitational pull: IPL 2025 reached over 530 million viewers on television and more than 650 million on digital, while JioHotstar recorded a peak of 72.5 million concurrent viewers during India's T20 World Cup win, numbers against which every major advertiser's rupee is already pre-allocated months in advance. The third is consolidation by necessity, with Zee picking up the FIFA portfolio precisely because the market leaders opted out, a classic distressed-acquisition play aimed at user growth rather than immediate ad-revenue payback.

“Zee's leadership rightly called football ‘massively underleveraged' in India. But underleveraged and commercially ready are two entirely different things,” Sethi added. 

“This gap is filled by building viewing habits and advertiser conviction over the years. While India figures out its unit economics, the global tournament is a massive tech showcase. It features connected match balls generating 500 data points per second and AI-powered 3D player avatars. Even more disruptive is the CazéTV model in Brazil, streaming all 104 matches free on YouTube with creator-led energy. It forces a fundamental question: what does a sports media product look like when it's built natively for fans who aren't yet subscribers?”

Sethi framed the larger stakes plainly. “The question is not whether India loves football. It does. The question is whether our ecosystem can build the infrastructure to convert that passion into a durable commercial asset, or if we will keep treating the World Cup as a once-in-four-years distressed buy. Tonight, 80,000 fans fill the Azteca. India will be watching too. Just not on its own commercial terms yet.”

Fandom without a flag

Set against that economic caution is a counter-argument that has gained currency in the run-up to this World Cup: that India's absence from the tournament is not a liability for brands but, in a strange way, an advantage. According to Nielsen's Global Sports Report, football now ranks as India's second-most followed sport, an audience built almost entirely on club football, the Premier League, La Liga, and on international tournaments where Indian fans pick a side purely on emotional affinity rather than national pride.

“India has never qualified for a FIFA World Cup, and yet Indian brands are spending hundreds of crores to be part of it,” said Alfie Saldanha, Head of Brand and Marketing Services, Protean eGov Technologies. “Mahindra is Co-Presenting Sponsor on Zee's broadcast. Diageo, Apple, Pernod Ricard, and Mondelez all signed up. Zee secured exclusive FIFA broadcast rights in India until 2034 — a country that can't qualify for the tournament is building a decade-long marketing infrastructure around it. That's not irrational. That's one of the smartest brand plays in India right now.”

Saldanha's case rests on a distinction that is easy to miss amid the sponsorship logos: cricket's emotional territory in India is already owned by the sport, by the BCCI, by Team India itself, leaving brands to operate within a fairly narrow, nationalistic frame. Football, in contrast, offers a wide-open emotional landscape.

“India has 300 million football fans. They don't support India because India isn't playing, so they support Brazil, Argentina, France, or Portugal, and that creates something rare for marketers: a passionate, emotionally invested audience with zero national loyalty bias,” he said. “In cricket, emotional territory is owned by the sport, the BCCI, and Team India. In football? Wide open. A brand that shows up authentically here doesn't compete with national pride. It becomes part of a fan's global identity.”

That gap between opportunity and execution is precisely where Saldanha's critique lands hardest. Most brand activity tied to this World Cup, he argues, still looks like inventory-buying dressed up as marketing: logo placements, match-break spots, presenter sponsorships, the safe and instantly forgettable playbook that repeats every four years regardless of who is hosting.

“But most Indian brands are still treating the World Cup like a large poster site: logo placements, match break spots, presenter sponsorships. They’re safe and measurable, but rapidly forgotten,” Saldanha said. “The brands that will truly win ask a different question entirely: what does it mean to love a game your country cannot play? That question answered with honesty and craft is a campaign. No celebrity footballer needed. No official FIFA partnership required. Just a brand brave enough to tell a real story. India won't qualify for the World Cup in the next decade. But 300 million Indians will watch every single one. The pitch is open. Most Indian brands are still in the stands.”

Early signals from the campaign roster

The early campaigns rolling out around Zee's coverage suggest the industry is, at least partially, attempting to bridge that gap. Mahindra's association leans into its SUV-led brand narrative of adventure and resilience, with creative built around journeys that mirror football's themes of endurance and a long road to triumph. Diageo, as Co-Powered By Sponsor, is leaning into football's communal viewing culture, building campaigns around the celebratory energy of pubs and lounges where groups of fans gather for late-night matches, a use case that global FIFA partner Budweiser, owned by AB InBev, is also building around in India under its ‘Let It Pour' platform.

“At Budweiser, the FIFA World Cup is far more than a marketing moment; it's where our identity as a brand for celebrations truly comes to life,” said Vineet Sharma, Vice President – Marketing, AB InBev India. “In India, we are bringing this global partnership to life through our unified platform, ‘Let It Pour', which celebrates the passion, anticipation and shared spirit that define the tournament. While TV and OTT remain important, our FIFA plans are not solely reliant on live integrations.”

Whether this round of campaigns ends up closer to Saldanha's vision of brave, fandom-led storytelling or to Khazanchi's more transactional reading of the World Cup as a pure reach event will likely only become clear once the tournament moves into its knockout stages, when viewership typically spikes regardless of which teams India's fans are backing.

What the tournament really tests

Taken together, the three vantage points point to a tournament that is simultaneously a media opportunity, an economic stress test, and a creative dare. Khazanchi's framing strips the World Cup down to its function as an audience-aggregation event, no different in kind from the IPL or the Mahakumbh, just rarer in frequency. Sethi's numbers explain why even that aggregation has struggled to convert into broadcast value in India, with timezone mismatches and cricket's pre-booked ad inventory leaving Zee to pick up a portfolio that bigger players were unwilling to bet on. And Saldanha's argument suggests that the absence of a national team, often seen as football's biggest handicap in India, might actually be the category's most underused creative asset.

What is not in question is the underlying interest. Nielsen's data confirms football's position as India's second-most followed sport, and over a hundred brand conversations have already translated into more than a dozen confirmed partnerships on Zee's platforms alone, even before ball one was kicked in Mexico City. The open question, heading into 39 nights of football that India will watch but not play in, is whether Indian brands use this World Cup to simply rent attention, or to finally build something that outlasts the final whistle.