Every four years, the FIFA World Cup does something no marketing budget can replicate. It drops sport in front of billions of people who aren't looking for it – and hands rights holders a window to convert casual attention into genuine fan engagement that generates revenue for years afterwards.
Most of them don't take it.
The 2026 World Cup, landing across the USA, Mexico and Canada this summer, is the biggest version of that opportunity in history. New host markets. New audiences. New football fans encountering teams, players and stories they've never had reason to follow before. The question isn't whether second club fandom will spike around the tournament. It will. The question is whether the clubs, leagues and brands with a smart FIFA World Cup 2026 marketing strategy have what they need to catch it – and turn it into money.
The commercial case for the second club fan
Let’s start with the number that should be on every commercial director's agenda: only 14% of fans globally claim to support just one club. The single-club fan, long treated as the default, is the exception. The vast majority of fans follow multiple teams, across leagues and countries, and their football fan engagement patterns are far closer to primary fans than most rights holders have assumed.
Second club fans watch highlights. They follow clubs and players on social. They buy merchandise, even without local ties. They attend matches. The gap in sports fan engagement between primary and secondary fans exists, but it is smaller than the gap in commercial attention that rights holders pay to each.
Then there is the spending figure. The average fan spends around €200 per year on club-specific items – membership, merchandise, match tickets. Multiply that across the volume of second club fans that a single global tournament introduces to your sport, your league, or your club, and the scale of what's being left on the table comes into focus.
Second club fandom is not a consolation prize. It is an incremental football fan revenue stream, lower friction to acquire and, if handled correctly, a pipeline into something more durable.
Know who you're converting
Not all second club fans are the same, and not all of them spend the same way. Converting World Cup attention into real sports revenue streams requires understanding which type of fan you're dealing with – because the pathway to monetisation is different for each.
Some fans follow individuals, not institutions. They discovered a player during the tournament, fell for their story, and followed them back to their club. These fans respond to player-led content: training footage, personality-driven social, behind-the-scenes access. Their first purchase is often a shirt with a name on the back.
Others are drawn in by narrative. They watched an underdog run, a comeback, a moment that got replayed a thousand times. They don't necessarily know the club deeply, but they liked the story. Keep the story going after the tournament ends and you keep them engaged. Let it go quiet, and they move on to the next one.
There are fans who came in through culture, such as the kit, the aesthetic, the way a club sits at the intersection of sport and lifestyle. For them, the commercial pathway runs through fashion collaborations, limited drops and brand partnerships that extend the club's relevance beyond ninety minutes.
And there are fans who follow causes and values, clubs that stand for something specific, whose identity goes beyond results. These fans are slower to spend but longer to stay. They are also, increasingly, the ones driving word-of-mouth in markets where the club has no legacy presence.
Understanding which of these archetypes your new fans belong to isn't guesswork. It's research, and it changes everything about how you follow up after the final whistle.
The World Cup window
The 2026 tournament unlocks a specific set of doors that don't open up often.
The USA is not a mature football market in the traditional sense, but it is the world's most valuable commercial one. Sports fan engagement there is multi-sport by default, multi-club fandom is deeply ingrained, and the barriers to adopting a new club are low. For European and South American clubs with no meaningful US fanbase, this summer is the most cost-effective international fan acquisition strategy they will ever have. The fans will be watching. The only question is whether there's anything worth following on the other side of the tournament.
The tournament also accelerates player-driven fandom on a scale that club transfers can't match. A breakout performer at a World Cup creates millions of new fans for their club in a matter of weeks. Clubs with players in contention, particularly those from markets that historically haven't engaged with their league, should be activating now. Not after the tournament. Now.
Distribution matters as much as content. Putting the right material in front of the right audiences means being present on the platforms where those audiences are – localised social channels, language-specific content, platform-native formats that travel. A highlight clip in English won't convert a fan in Jakarta. A player-led reel in Bahasa Indonesia might.
From attention to revenue
ttention generated by a World Cup has a half-life. Fans who discover a club in June are still warm in September. By January, if nothing has been done to deepen the relationship, most of them have drifted.
The clubs and rights holders that consistently deliver on their sports fan monetisation strategies don't treat it as a campaign. They treat it as an acquisition funnel, one that requires the same deliberate architecture as any other commercial channel. Audit the fanbase before the tournament. Identify which levers are most likely to draw in new fans from target markets. Build content and experiences around those levers. Distribute to where the fans will be, not where the club already is. Measure what converts, and feed it back. That’s a strong sports club revenue strategy.
The €200 average annual spend doesn't materialise automatically. It materialises when clubs give fans a reason to spend – and then make it easy to do so.
The FIFA World Cup 2026 marketing window will create more potential second club fans than any event in recent memory. The ones who become paying, loyal, long-term supporters of your club will be the ones you went looking for.
Want to understand what drives second club fandom for your team, and how to turn it into revenue? Read The rise of the 'Second Club Fan', our report in collaboration with MTM – available now.
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