Authored by Jenny Bermudez, Account Director, B2B ANZ
For years, sponsorship was visibility for rent. LEDs, sleeve patches, turf paint, tickets and merch, all with a hope that eyeballs would magically convert into equity.
That era is over. And with the 2026 FIFA World Cup underway, the biggest stage in sport right now makes that clearer than ever. Billions of fans are watching. Hundreds of brands are spending. Yet most will leave no memory behind.
Sport media is growing 14% year on year, yet brand recall is stuck at 29%. Attention is scarce, memory is selective, and fans gravitate to distinctive moments, not to the brands with the biggest logos. The World Cup amplifies this problem. It is the most competitive sponsorship environment on the planet. Being present is not enough.
For B2B brands this challenge is sharper still. Decision makers don’t buy logos, they buy credibility, value and effort. The B2B brands that win memory equity leverage fan behaviour to convert attention into trust and pipeline.
And this doesn’t need to be difficult. There are several principles, proven psychological effects, for B2B brands to engage focused sporting audiences at scale. Here is how to apply them right now, while the World Cup holds the world’s attention.
The Isolation Effect - Stand out or sit out
Fans remember what is different. Von Restorff proved decades ago that to be distinctive, we must be different. Yet only 15% of sports brand assets globally are truly distinctive. Strong assets drive better recall and favourability, especially when paired with a memorable fan experience.
The World Cup is louder than anywhere else in sport. Every major brand is competing for the same eyeballs across the same broadcasts. The moments that cut through are the ones that break the pattern of the game itself. VAR review windows, analytical overlays, half-time data stories, walkout content. In 2024 IBM and Wimbledon showed exactly how this works, embedding real-time insights for 16 million fans and processing more than 2.7 million data points across the tournament. The creative worked because it was useful, distinctive and unmistakably theirs. That is the standard to aim for right now.
Finding a distinguishing moment is hard, but not impossible. Pre-test for recall and uniqueness. Use AI tools like Dragonfly to rapidly prototype distinctive creative territories, test visual contrast, or A/B test asset recognition before they go live. Or go classic and run fan groups to decode emotional response.
The Halo Effect - Borrow brilliance
Event brand fit improves cognitive, emotional and behavioural outcomes. Because trust is increasingly recognised as a direct driver of revenue and competitive advantage, with 93% of executives linking it to financial performance, the stakes are high.
In B2B, pairing with a respected partner lifts trust by 17%. The same rule applies in sport, and the World Cup is one of the most powerful halo-generating properties in existence. But the halo only transfers to brands that have genuinely earned the right to stand next to it. Fans notice the difference between a brand that has invested in something real and one that has simply bought space on a backdrop.
When fans see genuine investment in athlete wellbeing, community development or sustainability, they see care, credibility and authenticity. Macquarie University’s partnership with Sydney FC has shown this locally: delivering education and community initiatives across regional New South Wales, reaching more than 600 students and 200 players, and building long-term affinity with the club. The same principle applies at World Cup scale. Brands that tie their presence to something meaningful, a foundation, a development programme, a community commitment, will carry more trust out of the tournament than those that do not. Borrowing brilliance is not cheating, it’s good strategy.
The Illusion of Effort Effect - Show your work
When quality is hard to judge, visible effort signals value. In B2B tests, trust increased by 55% when buyers sensed higher effort behind a message. Sport is no different. Fans love the grind, the training, the tech, the teamwork.
The World Cup creates a particular opportunity here. Audiences are not just watching the goals, they are following the tactics, the data, the preparation, the decisions made in the tunnel and on the training pitch. Accenture’s Six Nations partnership captured this well, showcasing the data science behind performance stories and illustrating exactly how analytics shapes outcomes. It is a clear example of how showing the how, not just the headlines, turns expertise into trust. A reminder that analytics becomes credibility when you show the method, not just the result.
Brands investing in the World Cup should do the same. Reveal your tech, your methodology, your data science, your governance. The decision makers in your audience are watching the same tournament as everyone else, and the brands that make their thinking visible alongside it will be far more memorable than those showing only their logo. Transparency signals partnership, capability and care, consciously to decision makers and subconsciously to fans.
The impact of effects
These psychological effects work together to move a brand’s visibility to memorability, giving B2B marketers a structure to design partnerships that fans notice, remember and act on. With the World Cup commanding more attention than any other event right now, the window to apply them is open. Ultimately, brands want a decision maker’s trust: the single biggest driver in the buying process, according to the data in our fifth annual Superpowers Index.
The key takeaways to act on while the World Cup has the world’s attention:
- Buy memory not inventory. Prioritise distinctive moments and utilities over raw visibility. At the World Cup, that means owning a specific content moment, not just a logo placement. Pre-test with fan groups.
- Make the halo measurable. Tie rights to initiatives with real-world outcomes and publish them. Track results by decision maker audiences.
- Operationalise effort. Build a repeatable ‘show your work’ series pre-, during- and post-tournament. The World Cup schedule gives you a natural arc to work with.
- Design for frictionless fandom. Reduce steps from attention to action with native app utilities, QR and shoppable moments in official environments.
By focusing on these four elements in a market where attention is the prize and memory drives opportunities, the B2B brands that design for how fans think, feel and act will be the ones who turn a World Cup moment into lasting momentum.