Beyond the Pitch: Toronto Prepares for FIFA 2026
Presented by AMA Toronto, Beyond the Pitch brought together marketers, brand leaders, creators, and football fans in a room buzzing with the energy only Toronto can hold. With the arrival of FIFA 2026, brands are looking to turn that brief moment of buzz into lasting affinity.
There is an immense opportunity and pressure to create campaigns that drive sustained engagement and an impact that far outlives the final whistle, especially when it’s happening on their home turf.
Moderated by Akshay Tandon, an international journalist and news host, the evening’s second panel explored how brands can build meaningful, enduring connections with fans. He set the tone by reminding everyone that “FIFA is not just a game. It is energy, passion, pride, and imagination.”
“When emotion, identity, and storytelling come together, magic happens, creating moments that resonate far beyond the final whistle,” he added.
Sports as Storytelling, Communities as Audience
Jennifer Frees, chief business and marketing officer, TIFF, stepped in with a refreshing lens shaped by years of curating stories on screens, big and small.
She sees TIFF “as editorial accomplices,” a guide that doesn’t dictate the story but adds texture to it. “Sport is storytelling too, emotional, cultural, and deeply human.”
Frees drew a parallel to sport, where emotion and culture intertwine in ways that are as cinematic as any festival premiere. She commented that as marketers, we like to imagine fans growing up playing the sport obsessively or inheriting their loyalties from family. But in reality, many come in the opposite way.
Some start as diehard youth fans who fall in love with the game, then the players, then the behind‑the‑scenes stories. But there’s also a huge audience like Frees, who come in because of the human stories first, and only then fall for the sport. Many recent Jays fans can likely relate to this during the World Series.
Frees concluded “the real magic happens when brands succeed in adding colour and layers to these bigger stories, to the people in and behind and around the game, and really adding a human side to the sports experience.” Her message was clear. Give people something human, something that feels alive, and they will carry that story with them long afterward.
AI and Fan Insights: Understanding the Crowd
Before the panel began, Laura Pearce, head of marketing at Google Canada, set the room humming with an insightful presentation that showed why fan behaviour in 2026 will be unlike anything Canada has seen before. For context, FIFA’s global audience is equivalent to 104 Super Bowls.
This staggering comparison is driven by facts: the FIFA World Cup in 2022 reportedly engaged a global audience of 5 billion people across media platforms, capturing nearly 65 per cent of the world’s population over its six-week, 104-match tournament, against the Super Bowl’s 124 million viewers.
Another example, a national moment was the Jays during the World Series which garnered about 70 or 80 million worldwide. The opening match of FIFA 2026 alone is expected to be the largest broadcast event out of Canada in history, with an anticipated audience of 300 million, a comment previously echoed by Sandra Gage, executive director, commercial operations at FIFA World Cup 2026 Canada.
This gravitational pull is already reshaping how people search, watch, and participate. Pearce showed how FIFA doesn’t just dominate screens, it spills into search bars, comment threads, and late-night rabbit holes. Fans aren’t simply watching; they are living around the tournament. Amazingly, 60 per cent of people would rather watch creators breaking down a major event, replaying highlights, hunting for player stories, rather than the event itself.
“Passion doesn’t sleep, sports fans look to engage at all times of the day,” she added. Brands should expect shoulder content to drive a lot of activity long before and long after the stadium is quiet. YouTube, she noted, has become “the world’s largest football stadium,” a place where Canadians are already consuming FIFA content at levels we’ve never seen in a pre-tournament cycle.
Pearce also explained how tools like Google’s Gemini, trained on billions of searches, now allow brands to sense the pulses of anticipation almost in real time and move at the speed of sport. AI is enabling faster fan insights to drive creative messaging and creative testing, and AI tools like Gemini allow for faster language versioning of creatives to allow brands to really connect with their multicultural fanbase.
During the panel, Pearce highlighted a shift in cultural influence. Athletes are no longer just competitors; they’re tastemakers, trendsetters, style icons, and global voices. And brands? They’re no longer chasing mere recognition. Instead, they’re seeking long-term value: authentic connection and loyalty that goes beyond exposure. AI, as she explained, is giving marketers the clarity to listen, to respond in ways that feel immediate, personal, and human, turning fleeting moments of excitement into lasting engagement.
Brands and the Power of Experience
Kelly Graham, head of marketing at Adidas Canada, emphasized that the real opportunity for brands isn’t just visibility, it’s relevance.
She explained how extreme audience segmentation is allowing Adidas to design experiences that feel personal and culturally attuned, giving fans something that speaks directly to them while still scaling across the country. Because today, Kelly said, “sport is not just about athleticism and performance and athletes. Sport is culture…and sport is fashion and sport is lifestyle.”
Graham sees this shift clearly. It’s why Adidas is rolling out more than 3,000 special items across Canada. The three stripes won’t just appear on screens or billboards; they’ll be woven into neighbourhoods, streets, stadiums, and gatherings.
“For FIFA 2026,’ she added, “we want fans to feel part of something shared and unforgettable.”
As Adidas designs experiences that honour that truth, the goal is to build something rooted in fans’ own stories, because every campaign is now a chance to spark emotional connection, long-term loyalty, and commercial impact.
Gold Standard Activation: Stories That Stick
Building on the power of experience, the conversation turned to activation strategies that create lasting fan engagement. Mark Harrison, president and CEO of T1 Agency and founder of SponsorshipX, entered the conversation with stories that felt like postcards from the frontlines of global events.
He described the Coca-Cola Café at the Olympics, where music, food, and dance folded into one another until the space felt like a living story. He recalled Budweiser’s real-time world, where content moved as fast as sport itself. He spoke about Airbnb in Paris, rethinking accessibility and rewriting what inclusion could look like for fans around the world.
“The best activations are stories people can step into, and FIFA 26 is the time to break silos, create energy, and celebrate together,” Harrison said, noting that Adidas and Coca-Cola, once siloed giants, are now collaborating, stitching their campaigns together in ways that amplify connection rather than compete for it.
Beyond the big activations, Harrison highlighted the opportunity for brands, whether big or small, to create “white spaces” moments and physical places where fans can watch, celebrate, and experience the games together, riding the wave of emotion as a community.
With a grin, he added: “Turn your office into a FIFA viewing party.” Because engagement isn’t a spreadsheet, it’s energy, presence, and immediacy.
Measuring Beyond the Numbers
David Kincaid, founder and chair of Level5 Strategy, shifted the discussion on measurement from engagement to loyalty, stressing that true loyalty isn’t built over a 10-day event.
“The lifetime value of a loyal customer is worth far more than someone who tries you once in a while,” Kincaid said. “Building loyalty means engaging with fans 12 months a year, understanding their emotional, rational, and self-expressive needs, and weaving together experiences that make them feel seen and connected.”
Kincaid also argued for deeper collaboration between brands, rather than running messages in silos. Every marketer is trying to drive loyalty, he said, and today, with smarter tools, AI, and a shared vision, brands can create fan‑centric experiences and amplify their impact by working together to deliver aligned messaging to the highly micro‑segmented audiences of today.
As the event came to an end, Kincaid closed with a reminder. “Loyalty isn’t a metric, it’s a memory, and the question we should be asking ourselves is whether we’re evolving fast enough to meet modern fan expectations,” he said.
Are we changing fast enough to match the speed of Google, the pace of AI, the expectations of fans who want something more than what they saw before? FIFA 2026, Kincaid declared, is the moment to think differently, because opportunities like this don’t come twice, and the brands who catch the rhythm now will carry it farther than the rest.
Sustained Impact: Beyond the Final Whistle
As the second and final panel wrapped, one message was clear: the world’s biggest sporting event requires a strategy that looks far beyond the final whistle.
Sports marketing is no longer only about the game. It’s a mix of storytelling, connection, culture, and collaboration. It’s crafting moments that linger long after the final whistle, turning matches into memories, brands into companions, and Toronto into a city whose heartbeat the world will carry home.
Driven by technology, storytelling, and the human need to connect, the lessons are:
- Understand your fans and meet them where they are.
- Create emotional, cultural, and social touchpoints that extend beyond the event.
- Collaborate, innovate, and measure beyond traditional metrics.
As Laura Pearce said “The consumer expects us to do things differently, and we can’t let them down.” The insights shared by the panelist effectively highlighted this strategic shift. They showed how brands must evolve from viewing the World Cup as a six-week event to embracing it as a multi-year content journey. By tapping into the “human side of the sports experience” and leveraging digital “shoulder content,” brands can build a meaningful, enduring connection with fans, ensuring their impact resonates long afterward.
AMA Toronto extends its gratitude and thanks to Marketing Legend Sharifia Khan and Balmoral Multicultural Marketing for making “Beyond the Pitch” possible. Khan provided inspiration for the event and collaborated on the ideation for the program. We also thank Google Canada, title sponsor, and our event partners the Globe Media Group, Stonehenge Digital Studios and Cvent for their ongoing support and enthusiasm.
Visit our Events page for details on upcoming AMA Toronto events.
About AMA Toronto
AMA Toronto is a community of volunteer marketers that has been empowering leadership and business growth in Canada for nearly 80 years. The AMA, with more than 30,000 members and 70 chapters across North America, is the largest not-for-profit marketing association in the world, serving organizations and individuals who practice, teach and study marketing.
About the Author
Zeel Gandhi is a seasoned marketing and communications professional with over 10 years of experience. He currently volunteers as Director, Public Relations at AMA Toronto, leading strategic communications and storytelling for the marketing community. Professionally, he is a Communications and Content Manager at KPMG Canada, bringing deep experience across marketing, communications, brand storytelling, and transformation initiatives.
About the Photographer
Duo Ma is the director of volunteer onboarding and a photographer for AMA Toronto. Outside of AMA, she works as a Marketing and Trade Show Coordinator at Top Grade Molds. She has a master’s in marketing from Schulich School of Business. Her passion for photography has been a lifelong pursuit, stemming from her early years, and she takes joy in capturing cherished moments through her lens.