Football, FIFA and the Event Economy

Football is the ultimate event: it brings people together, it fosters community, and it drives purchases and loyalty.

It might not seem like a natural leap to go from football to marketing. But, as discussed in this article, there are more links between the two than you’d think; namely that they are connected by the prevalence of our ‘event economy’.

That is to say that, in events, we can actually learn a lot from the World Cup.

It is a definitive example of consumer behaviour en masse. It's also a mirror held up to the way that businesses can (and should) react to this behaviour in order to make the most of this melting pot of concentrated attention. 

What Football Does for Finances  

With the ‘World Cup set to deliver £3.8bbn windfall for British businesses’, it's safe to say that football transforms our economy.  

A lot of this revenue comes from pubs, betting, and food. People place their bets, watch the match at the pub, and get a takeaway on the walk home. The perfect evening. 

In the face of these behaviours, businesses adapt. This is especially true of hospitality businesses but really it can benefit any business which is able to offer venues for screenings, or ride the wave of the excitement by selling merch, or giving discounts and creating scarcity.

But it’s not all about the money that businesses make on the day of the match itself.

In fact, it’s much more about the establishment of connection with an audience. While people are excited, and concentrated around a particular event, businesses are able to make connections, foster memorable experiences, and create trust and genuine care around their work.

Just like a marketing event. We’ll get into that in more detail in just a second... 

Hospitality Titan, Stonegate, Responding to the kick off

What Football Teaches Us About the Events Economy and Consumer Psychology 

It links to three factors: 

• The ‘Experience Economy’- or the idea that it's the experience more than the product which makes a consumer interaction memorable, leading to brand loyalty

• The ‘Attention Economy’ - the idea that in a world full of ad fatigue, those businesses who can grab and keep attention are the ones that succeed 

• Ad Fatigue – the concept that people are so bombarded with advertisements everyday, that they don’t really connect with them anymore, and in fact often actively avoid the things they perceive as an advert

  
  

In short, people seek experiences, not things, and they don't want to have purchases thrust upon them, but to form meaningful connections with those purchases and the brands behind them.

So, for example, in football, a person is much more likely to remember the atmosphere in the pub when the winning goal was scored than they are the particular pint of lager that they were drinking at the time, no matter how delicious, hopsy and refreshing it might have been.

That means that the pub’s job is to make that atmosphere memorable, to create a culture around that particular bar, and that particular TV screen. After all, those memories created at that pub during that match man that customers are more likely to make the pub their regular.  

But it extends beyond that too. Beer companies often frame their products around moments, and vibes, and experiences, rather than around the particular taste of the beer itself, or anything that is particularly unique about its flavour.

Stella Artois, for example, leaned into the atmosphere of the FIFA World Cup in this advert, which focuses on the feeling of watching that winning goal, rather than anything related to the beer itself. Budweiser, meanwhile, created this advert, which focuses on the experience of football kicking off: the excitement, the community, different people, united by a specific focal point.

Takeaways for your Next Event 

There are two lessons here. Firstly, that we can learn from big brands who leapfrog off the experience of the World Cup, drawing on the emotions, memories, and associations of those moments to feed into the experience economy.

They are utilising the notion that experience sells, and football is one of the most unifying experiences we have.

The takeaway is, then, to focus on experience when thinking about your marketing and brand positioning. Attend events, where you can craft real moments with real people, and place your product or service at the centre of that.

But we can also learn from the hospitality industry, which is very good at making the most of the attention that is already there when the football is on. Using that audience, which comes to the pub with a particular shared aim.

Events are similar, in the respect that, attending an event, you have a ready-made warm audience. 

What’s different, though, is that you don’t have the match at the centre of your exhibition stand. So, what’s going to draw people in instead?  

Well, this is where we can draw on the idea of what the football does for consumers and businesses: businesses take that central, galvanising activity—watching the football—and create a welcoming, memorable environment around it. 

What do you need to do then?  

The answer, of course, is to create a similar vibe. An activity that brings people together, just like the beautiful game does. 

Not THE Beautiful Game, but Certainly A Beautiful Game

Qettle’s exhibition stand at the 2024 installer show demonstrated a clever, on brand immersivity, when they offered ‘Beer on Tap’. 

Something we come back to again and again at Image is that it’s really good to gamify your stand, but that the game you choose should advance your brand messaging, and work with it, rather than against it.  

Qettle’s beer tap is a great example of this. It shows off their product but adds a fun twist that catches audiences’ attention. It attracts people to the stand in the same way that football attracts people to specific venues. 

Qettle at The Installer Show 2024 (PHOTO: Image Experiential)

Similarly, MSIG’s milk-the-cow game at BIBA 2025 was a way to discuss MSIG’s agricultural insurance services, and to bring people together around a particular topic. 

In both examples, a game is used to bring people into a space, where a brand can then focus on good customer service, question-answering, and insightful storytelling and conversations, which encourage memories to be made, and slots the brand into the event economy.  

MSIG at BIBA 2025  (PHOTO: Image Experiential)

Both of these clients made the most of having a warm audience in the room with them at their respective events. They then used games, competitive spirit, and a sense of excitement and innovation, to grab people's hard-won attention, and craft those meaningful, memorable experiences.

After that, as this article suggests is the case with The World Cup, 'the biggest challenge is maintaining service quality while responding to change in demand throughout the day'.

And that's where hiring an event professional can help.

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(COVER PICTURE: Bence Boros on Unsplash)