USA TODAY’s Jim Reineking noted MLS will be “represented by a league-record 44 players” when Canada, Mexico and the U.S. co-host this summer’s FIFA World Cup. The 44 active MLS players is “an improvement” over the 36 the league had competing at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. In all, 17 different countries have an MLS player. MLS noted that it has the “most players of any league in the Western Hemisphere, and has the second-most outside of Europe’s big five leagues” (USA TODAY, 6/2).
DIFFERENT APPROACH: AD AGE’s Jon Springer writes Visa’s latest “Tap In” World Cup campaign comes as tournament sponsors “increasingly build their campaigns around creator content, social media and activations designed to extend beyond match days.” For Visa, that means “putting social and digital engagement at the center of an experiential campaign, with live events and other in-person activations built around it.” Springer notes Visa is “not alone in looking beyond traditional match-day marketing.” PepsiCo this year launched Pepsi Football Nation, while Unilever is “leaning heavily into creators.” Like Visa, these efforts “use social media, creator content and other activations designed to keep consumers engaged with brands away from the matches themselves” (AD AGE, 6/3).
COLD SALES: THE ATHLETIC’s Adam Crafton reported less than 6% of NJ Transit’s $98 round-trip tickets to MetLife Stadium “have been purchased” for the World Cup. A NJ Transit spokesperson noted that “only 17,739 tickets had been sold” as of May 31 at 5pm ET, across the entirety of the eight game-days scheduled to take place at MetLife Stadium. This is 5.5% of the total 320,000 inventory (THE ATHLETIC, 6/2).
