The World Cup has always been a quadrennial exercise in saturation, a moment when the global advertising industry decides, collectively, that a single sporting event justifies the deployment of approximately all available resources. This year, the saturation has a particular face attached to it — and it belongs, as it has for some time now, to Lionel Messi.
According to data from the audience measurement firm System1, Mr. Messi appears in 18 of the 80 major World Cup campaigns currently being tested across the United States, Britain, and Argentina. That works out to nearly a quarter of the biggest advertisements surrounding the tournament, a figure that suggests either remarkable consensus among marketers or a remarkable shortage of imagination. (Perhaps both.)
The roster of brands features the usual suspects from FIFA's top sponsorship tier: Adidas, Michelob Ultra, and Lay's among them. Mr. Messi's arrangement with Adidas, of course, dates back to his teenage years in Barcelona, which now feels like something from the Paleolithic era of football marketing.
The concentration of celebrity in a single pitchman is not, strictly speaking, new. But the arithmetic here is notable. While Mr. Messi's left foot has been occupied securing trophies for Inter Miami and preparing to lead Argentina into the tournament, his commercial apparatus has been working at what might charitably be called industrial scale.
His value to advertisers was demonstrated during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where campaigns featuring him consistently ranked among the highest-performing on social media — a metric that brand managers now treat with the reverence once reserved for Nielsen ratings.
Whether appearing in one of every four major advertisements constitutes market efficiency or market failure is, as they say, a matter of perspective.
Original story published in adweek.com: "How Lionel Messi Became the Face of 1 in 4 World Cup Ads"