EAST RUTHERFORD, NEW JERSEY – JULY 5: IShowSpeed aka Darren Jason Watkins Jr. commentates the FIFA World Cup 2026 Round of 16 soccer match between Brazil and Norway at New York New Jersey Stadium on July 5, 2026 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)
Getty Images
FIFA and TikTok gave 30 creators behind the scenes access at this World Cup, from bus arrivals to training sessions and press conferences. It’s the first time FIFA has designated a Preferred Platform partner, and creators are now part of that deal instead of commenting on it from the outside.
It’s a fascinating development that explains a lot about how fans are consuming the World Cup this year.
Twitch executives, brand strategists and a new Gen Z survey tell the same story from different angles. Creators are the infrastructure that this tournament runs on: the live streams, the brand campaigns, the pop-ups, and even the avatars fans wear while watching.
Twitch has become a digital stage
Twitch is one of the clearest examples. iShowSpeedJasontheween and Marlon have turned IRL live streams into one of the most exciting formats in the tournament, says Pontus Eskilsson, Twitch’s VP of Global Partnerships.
“By watching the matches and streaming their reactions live, they give audiences a front-row seat to the World Cup experience, combining behind-the-scenes access with authentic commentary and real-time fan emotion,” Eskilsson told me.
IShowSpeed has taken it further. “IShowSpeed has embarked on a large-scale multi-country World Cup tour covering the Caribbean and a wider US tour across 16 host cities in the US, Canada and Mexico, featuring 104 matches and surprise appearances by professional footballers,” said Eskilsson. Other streamers like sakurashymko and Jynxzi stream the in-between moments: packing, traveling, partying.
Play puzzles and games at Forbes
DoorDash sponsored Men in Blazers’ Twitch coverage of matches in Latin America. Each week, the chat voted on which cuisine the hosts would eat during their Match Predictions segment, based on who they thought would win. A show turned into a running game.
That same appetite for real-time prediction is fueling a surge prediction market platformswhere fans turn a hunch into an ongoing public debate rather than a bet placed and forgotten.
The ecosystem around these platforms is also expanding. Comparison sites like Covers and Sportsbook Review are increasingly helping users navigate competing prediction services, while opening up additional monetization opportunities through referrals, sponsorships and affiliate partnerships.
“We see Twitch emerging as a ‘digital stage’ for a younger generation of fans, where games are no longer just watched, but shared, discussed and reinterpreted in real time, streamers paving the way for the rise of creator-owned sports broadcasting by providing commentary and interacting with their audience in a way that is unique to their community.” “The game is the same game. What’s different is the experience around it: You watch alongside a community, react to the action as it happens, see clips, comments and conversations unfold in real time.”
FIFA is already doing what the brand strategists predicted
Jo Wong, GM at POP.STORE, made this move before FIFA did. “Absolutely. The biggest change is that creators can no longer be treated as a secondary channel,” Wong told me. “FIFA’s partnership with TikTok is particularly strategic because it brings creators inside the official experience rather than leaving them to commentate from the outside. This is important because instead of amplifying content, creators translate the event to an audience that traditional sports media typically don’t attract or reach.”
Wong’s next line almost sounds like a preview of FIFA’s TikTok deal. “The next development is formal creator accreditation. Creator access should be seen as infrastructure, not a last-minute social campaign. This is what FIFA is doing right and what others should learn from going forward,” said Wong.
Raj Lala, VP of Partnerships and Digital Media Strategy at Vistar Media, made a similar case for the rest of the industry. “Right now, creators are moving the cultural conversation around sports,” Lala said in an interview. “However, organizations often limit their impact by keeping them quiet on their native social accounts. FIFA, broadcasters and clubs need to think multi-channel.”
Brands are chasing durability over virality
Jo Wong attributes brand success to application, not volume. “There’s no winning formula across the board for creators and brands,” Wong said. “What really wins is content that is in a format that matches the credibility and DNA of the brand and the creator and that turns attention into a proprietary relationship or action.”
Wong pointed to three campaigns in particular. “The campaigns that caught my attention are from Adidas, LEGO and Nike,” Wong said. “Adidas takes the hero movie approach with major global talent and deep class credibility. LEGO shows the power of storytelling in local social enterprises by letting the athlete audience enjoy the moment. Finally, Nike plays the long game with a continuous rollout designed to keep people coming back throughout the tournament window.”
Wong’s reading of resilience comes from two different discourses. Asked what brands should do after a campaign ends, she said the smartest don’t treat the tournament as a rental. “Brands that win don’t just borrow a creator’s audience for 39 days,” Wong said. “Instead, they’re using the moment to build something they’ll still own when the football teams go home and we move into football season.”
Asked separately which creator has executed the smartest World Cup strategy, she brought the question back to brands. “This is the real lesson of the creator economy: the smart strategy is not to chase the loudest post,” Wong said. “Rather, it’s about knowing what kind of attention you can gain, what kind of relationship you can build, and what kind of revenue or loyalty you can maintain after the moment has peaked. Durability is more important than virality.”
They are the creators of the main brand of sports media still
Not everyone agrees on how far this goes. Wong is careful about the “main” label. “Creators are becoming the most effective bridge between major sports moments and younger audiences, but I would be cautious to call them the mainstream media brand,” Wong said. “A viral post may get attention, but attention is not the same thing as a resilient audience.”
Lala sees it differently. “We are witnessing an exciting shift where the line between the athlete and the creator economy has completely blurred, profoundly reshaping the way younger generations consume sports,” Lala said. “For Gen Z and die-hard millennial fans, creators aren’t just a secondary channel, they’re the primary lens through which they view sports culture.”
Both describe the same tournament. They just disagree about how far it is.
Creator content flows into the physical world
Offscreen is where the shift is most clearly seen. Unilever mobilized more than 50,000 creators across more than 35 brands for the tournament, anchoring that reach with “House of Fresh” pop-ups in New York, Miami and Mexico City.
“Unilever’s activation stands out as a masterclass in combining the talent of creators with highly resonant, real-life fan experiences,” Lala told me. “By mobilizing 50,000 creators around the world, they have fully scaled their cultural footprint.”
Lala sees the same pattern across the board in out-of-home advertising. “Beyond traditional social platforms, we’re seeing real-world experiences and out-of-home advertising become the new ‘live stream’ for cultural relevance during big moments like the World Cup,” Lala said.
Programs like TikTok’s “Out of Phone” extension, which Vistar Media supports, are now removing native creator content from mobile streams and out-of-home screens in major real-time markets. “Now, creators are central to this real-world enhancement,” Lala said.
Roblox is where the Gen Z fandom lives now
Roblox shows that the same change is happening somewhere else entirely. The Roblox 2026 Digital Expression Reportproduced with Ipsos, found that 73% of surveyed Gen Z Roblox users identify as active sports fans. Roblox users logged 1.1 billion hours of sports experiences in the second half of 2025, a 154% year-over-year increase.
Weekly soccer search interest on the platform tripled during the 2022 World Cup compared to the previous three months. It is an early sign of the same pattern now appearing in 2026.
For these fans, the avatar carries the fanaticism. Gen Z Roblox users bought 42 million jersey avatar items in the last half of 2025, spending 120 million Robux. And 67% say customizing an avatar with sports gear makes them feel part of a team.
Previous generations wore a jersey on match day. This generation wears one every day.
The crossover with real world fandom runs both ways. 61% of users surveyed say playing sports on Roblox makes them more likely to watch the sport in real life, and 64% say they play or engage in sports on Roblox that they currently wouldn’t do in real life. Roblox is quietly building tomorrow’s stadium audience.
The bottom line
Broadcast agreement and stadium location still matter. But the real estate of this cycle sat somewhere else: in the space between the match and the fan.
Creators broadcast from the booths. Brands build communities that belong to communities instead of borrowing audiences for 39 days. Gen Z fans dress up as an avatar for a tournament they watch on three screens at once. FIFA hands out media credentials to TikTok creators instead of broadcasters.
FIFA, broadcasters and brands have spent the last cycle treating creators as reinforcements. This, they built around them from the beginning. The next one will start from there.
