MIAMI, FLORIDA – APRIL 02: (L-R) Tim Howard and Thierry Henry celebrate American Airlines as the official North American airline supplier of the FIFA World Cup 26™, in partnership with Qatar Airways at Miami International Airport on April 02, 2026 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Michael Simon/Getty Images for American Airlines)
Getty Images for American Airlines
Every day, hundreds of pitches flood my inbox, and it’s my job to give each a look. Most get tossed into the trash bin. But every so often, one grabs my attention, like a note from CreatorIQ about which brands are winning the World Cup. The usual suspects were there: Adidas, Nike and Puma, in that order. What I didn’t expect to see was Cole Haan and Dior as early winners on the list.
That got me curious: What role do these luxury brands play in the World Cup and how did they rise to the top in mindshare around it? And if Dior and Cole Haan are breaking through, what other luxury brands are leveraging the World Cup to reach consumers? Alex Rawitz, head of research and insights at CreatorIQ, kindly obliged to answer my questions.
Because FIFA tightly controls which brands can show up officially at the World Cup, luxury brands have found a workaround: tapping their social media creator networks. And luxury brands—creators of culture in the broadest sense—can’t afford to miss what is shaping up to be the ultimate cultural event of 2026.
“The World Cup transcends soccer, or sports at large,” Rawitz explained. “It’s a staging ground for culture and storytelling, generating moments and discourse that are remembered for generations. Naturally, every brand in the world wants a piece of the pie.”
Traveling In Luxury Style
Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Dior struck gold with creator posts documenting what players were wearing and carrying as they headed off to host cities across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. “The result has become the luxury industry’s equivalent of the Met Gala, generating millions of earned impressions for luxury brands,” CreatorIQ stated.
The defining moment when the airport became the new red carpet happened as the France national football team took off from Le Bourget Airport. Chanel won top honors, capturing the record for the single highest-EMV post across the luxury dataset with a TikTok post generating more that 700,00 impressions and $109,000 EMV. Overall, Chanel followed Dior as the number-two World Cup brand by EMV, generating over $500,000 with 3.8 million impressions and 315,000 engagements.
And it wasn’t only the French team that made the best-dressed list. Spain’s Lamine Yamal chose a Chanel jacket and carry-on, while Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo arrived in Gucci, and Norway’s fan favorite Erling Haaland carried a limited-edition Hermès Birkin “Endless Road” bag.
“For luxury brands, players’ arrivals have become one of the most valuable uncontrolled media moments on the fashion calendar,” CreatorIQ reported. “Brands with strong athlete affinity, whether through formal ambassador relationships or simply through cultural alignment with style-conscious players, should be treating tournament arrival windows as strategic earned media opportunities.”
Burberry Scores By Activating Its Social Network
Burberry, the English heritage luxury brand, left nothing to chance. CreatorIQ noted it “stands apart as a luxury house that demonstrably ran a paid, World Cup-specific creator campaign.”
England midfielder Morgan Rogers became the centerpiece of Burberry’s strategy through a Dazed magazine profile that positioned him as a new kind of English footballer—and dressed him head-to-toe in Burberry. That feature, along with Teen Vogue showcasing Thai-actor and Burberry brand ambassador Bright Vachirawit as a football fan, elevated Burberry to number three in EMV at $496,000 with over 5 million impressions.
“Burberry’s World Cup strategy demonstrates that luxury brands don’t need official FIFA partnerships or mass-market ambassador rosters to generate meaningful creator EMV at a major tournament,” the company explained. “What they need is the right athlete and a credible editorial voice.”
Marc Jacobs Goes To Dallas
Marc Jacobs—recently sold by LVMH to WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group—anchored its World Cup retail activation in its Dallas store, close by AT&T Stadium that is hosting World Cup tournaments. The brand’s NorthPark Center store engaged in-store shoppers with limited-edition soccer ball-inspired tote bags representing various World Cup nations, including the Netherlands, Japan, England and Argentina. The totes were not available online.
In addition, Marc Jabos dressed six U.S. players alongside fashion model Imaan Hammam for a Vogue photo spread, adding cultural cache to both the team and the brand. To date, Marc Jacobs has generated 2 million impressions and $200k in EMV around the World Cup.
CreatorIQ observed that the brand’s NorthPark retail activation “demonstrates a scalable model for luxury brands to generate host-city EMV at major sporting events: a product activation that is geographically specific, tournament-relevant and designed to be photographed.”
Yves Saint Laurent Makes History
“The luxury brands generating the most social media buzz are doing so because athletes and creators choose them organically,” CreatorIQ stated. “This represents both an affirmation of the power of long-term brand equity and a signal of significant unrealized opportunity.”
Yves Saint Laurent was one brand that didn’t let this opportunity go unrealized— and did it in an unexpected way. In 1998, YSL staged a runway show in the Stade de France stadium before the France-Brazil World Cup final. Creators resurrected that memory, posting content around this historic event that proved the brand’s long-standing sports bona fides. YSL generated $466k in EMV and 2.6 million impressions around this year’s World Cup, leveraging a real-life moment long before social media arrived on the scene.
“As football-fashion discourse reaches an all-time high, brands that have genuine historical intersections with the sport are finding those assets reactivating spontaneously,” the company explained.
World Cup 2026 Cultural Moment
CreatorIQ provides the data showing which brands are winning the World Cup in social media across the creator ecosystem. But the bigger story is the cultural context: luxury doesn’t sit outside or adjacent to sports anymore. Sports has become an arena where luxury brands create identity, aspiration and belonging.
“Sport has stopped being something luxury sponsors and started being something luxury lives inside,” shared Federica Levato, senior partner at Bain & Company. “More than a third of luxury consumers already treat major sporting events as status-driven social occasions.
“It all fits the bigger shift: luxury is redefining itself around lived moments rather than objects, with experiences now outpacing goods by about one and a half times. A World Cup isn’t a media buy anymore: it’s a stage where brands compete to feel life worth living,” she concluded.
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