Key takeaways:
- World Cup fan behavior varies sharply across the three host nations, both in how fans consume sports generally and how they follow the tournament, creating challenges and opportunities in each market. Rights holders and advertisers need to localize content, distribution, and sponsorship strategy by country.
- Mexico’s high multi-screen usage creates a real-time activation opportunity, where instant highlights, replays, and social-ready clips can connect sponsors to live fan conversation.
- Content depth should match fan intent: US and Canadian fans lean toward shorter World Cup content, while Mexican fans show a stronger appetite for extended highlights and full match replays.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is not just bigger because it has more teams and more matches. It is bigger because it is being staged across three countries with very different relationships to the sport.
And according to The 2026 FIFA World Cup Report: Engaging the Host Nations, the opportunity and challenge for sports rights holders will vary sharply from market to market.
The report, based on a survey of over 1,500 sports fans across the three host countries, found significant differences in World Cup interest, viewing habits, and demand for features like personalized highlights, augmented reality, and multi-angle viewing.
As expected, the report showed that Mexico simply can’t get enough of the World Cup, with 85% of respondents saying they normally follow the tournament.
When it comes to fan interest, Mexico is not just ahead of the other two countries. It’s far ahead. About 79% of Mexican respondents say they are more excited than they were for Qatar 2022, and only 6% say they do not plan to follow the 2026 tournament.
In contrast, the US is not nearly as enthralled by the world’s biggest sports tournament despite it being in its own backyard. Only 40% say they previously followed the World Cup, while still 38% say they do not plan to follow the 2026 tournament at all.
Those numbers stand to change as the first whistle creeps ever closer. The question is, how much will the numbers change?
It’s important to bear in mind that 40% of the US sports fans is still 100 million people. And fan interest in soccer in the US is trending upward quickly. Both the MLS and NWSL broke attendance records in recent years, and stars like Lionel Messi provide global star power.
The US Women’s National Soccer Team, of course, has been a dominant force in women’s soccer for decades, winning four Women’s World Cup titles and five Olympic gold medals.
US soccer saw a major spike in interest in 1994, the last time it hosted the World Cup, and could see an even bigger one this year once the World Cup arrives on home soil, especially if the US team advances deep into the elimination rounds.
The US may not be a soccer-first market, but the combination of scale, momentum, and home-country attention makes it too large to treat as a secondary opportunity.
Canada sits between the two when it comes to World Cup fan interest. About 49% of Canadian respondents previously followed the World Cup, and 46% say they are more excited than they were for Qatar 2022. In a hockey-first market, that points to meaningful tournament momentum.
Ultimately, the report reveals three distinct host markets that need to be treated differently in order to turn tournament attention into sustained engagement, stronger audience relationships, and commercial value.
Important Insights
1. Mexico’s multi-screen behavior creates a real-time engagement window
The most striking behavioral gap in the report is multi-screen usage.
In the US, 42% of respondents say they use additional screens during matches. In Canada, it’s a roughly equivalent 46%. But in Mexico, the number explodes to 89%.
Yes, in the country where 85% typically follow the World Cup, nine out of 10 are splitting their attention between two or even three screens.
The numbers suggest that fans in Mexico want a fully-immersive experience. They watch the action live on one screen and supplement that experience with one or more other screens, presenting a hyper-engaged market of superfans that enjoy sharing the moment with friends and family.
More than 53% of fans in Mexico are following live discussions on social channels, and 24% are discussing the game in real time in live chats while they watch games on their main screen.
That makes speed a strategic requirement in Mexico.
2. More engaged fans want deeper content
The report suggests that fans’ appetite for additional content beyond the 90 minutes of play depends on how deeply they are already engaged.
In the US and Canada, fans who want World Cup content outside the live matches prefer short form content (less than 3 minutes). That fits the general profile for more casual fans and is largely event-driven.
Mexican fans prefer extended highlights and match replays. For them, content is not just a catch-up tool. It is part of the overall tournament experience and clips will be played over and over again.
3. Canada is closer to Mexico in interest, but closer to the US in behavior
In viewing interest, Canada looks meaningfully closer to Mexico than the US: 49% of Canadian respondents say they have previously followed the tournament, compared to 40% in the US, and 46% say they are more excited than they were for Qatar 2022, compared to 32% in the US.
But in terms of viewing behavior, Canada looks much more like the US. Only 24% of Canadian fans say they use a paid streaming service to watch sports, compared to 37% in the US and 67% in Mexico. YouTube tells a similar story: 36% of Canadian fans list it as a top platform, almost identical to the US at 37%, while Mexico is much higher at 56%.
What this means for rights holders, broadcasters, and brands
The 2026 World Cup presents one of the biggest fan engagement opportunities in sports. But the opportunity will not look the same in every host country.
In Mexico, fans are already engaged, already watching across screens, and already looking for more ways to stay close to the action. That market needs instant highlights, extended replays, social-ready clips, personalized content, and sponsor activations that can move at the pace of the match.
In the US, the audience opportunity is enormous, but many fans will need easy entry points into the tournament: short highlights, player-led stories, explainers, cultural moments, and content that makes the World Cup feel relevant even to fans who do not follow soccer year-round.
In Canada, content should help carry fans from one major moment to the next, using recaps, national-team storylines, player profiles, and digital formats that make the tournament easier to follow between matches.
For the full country-by-country breakdown of World Cup interest, viewing habits, content preferences, second-screen behavior, and fan experience expectations, read the full report.
