The FIFA World Cup Is Weeks Away. The Drinks Industry’s Biggest Brands Are Making Very Different Bets on What It Is Actually For.

The FIFA World Cup 2026 kicks off on 11 June. In less than four weeks, the largest sporting event in history – 104 games, three host countries, an estimated five billion viewers – begins in North America. Every major drinks company has a plan. The plans are not the same, and the differences between them reveal more about each company’s strategic theory than any earnings call or press release this year.

The week that confirmed this started on 6 May, when Diageo announced the World Cup was “critically important” for its strategy and revealed more than 100 activations across 34 airports for Don Julio and Casamigos in travel retail. It continued on 11 May when AB InBev was named Cannes Lions Creative Marketer of the Year for the third time in five years – the first company in the award’s history to achieve this – on the back of Michelob Ultra’s “Superior Match” World Cup campaign, the largest in that brand’s history. And it became fully visible when Johnnie Walker confirmed it had changed its Striding Man icon for the first time in more than 100 years, specifically for a Mexico World Cup activation built around football legend Hugo Sánchez.

Three companies. Three completely different theories of what the World Cup is for.

AB InBev: one brand, one bet, compounding returns