Annenberg Answers: Understanding the World Cup as a Media Event

Every four years, the FIFA World Cup captures the attention of billions, making it one of the largest and most influential media events in the world.

We spoke to Katerina Girginova, co-founder and co-director of the Annenberg Extended Reality Lab and a scholar of global media, audiences, and technology, about why the World Cup is such a powerful case study in communications.

She explores how digital platforms are transforming fandom, what the tournament means for host cities like Philadelphia, and why sport continues to serve as a contested space where cultural, linguistic, and political boundaries are negotiated in real time.

From a communication perspective, what makes the World Cup such a powerful global media event, and how has that changed in the digital age?

Sport events like the World Cup are public and global platforms for attention where, in addition to the athletes, many interests and messages compete. There are many facets to it, but overall, these events gain their power based on the principles of communal experiences, whether positive, negative, or contested, symbolics, and economies of scale, including attention, affect, resources, and money.

For one, the sheer size of the World Cup makes it difficult to ignore. Often more than seven years of planning across local, national, and international stakeholders from various sectors goes into the staging of a weeks-long event. Then, there is the intense, global media coverage during the event itself. Of course, more people end up watching the World Cup by increasingly digital means, with overall reach expected to be over 5 billion worldwide this year, than at the stadiums, and many others have their daily routines impacted by the event.

In addition, the World Cup engages us on many multi-modal and multi-symbolic levels, including music, like national anthems and special theme songs, and imagery, like national flags. This year, the World Cup final will also feature a halftime show for the first time, making it more akin to American football and giving American audiences more motivation to tune in while providing advertisers with additional reasons to spend money on a spot. Shakira will make a nostalgic appearance.

In short, sport remains one of the last widely shared cultural spaces and the only genre to draw mass, live, and global viewership to live television broadcasts. An argument can be made that large-scale, live events are thriving in today’s digital age, which seems preoccupied with creating a semblance of authentic memories or what is sometimes referred to as the experience economy. At the same time, as I share below, the success of digital is altering the DNA of these very events in many complex ways.

How have digital platforms changed what it means to be a fan?

Several insightful pieces detail how, post-COVID-19, physical fans have increasingly become expendable to soccer matches, see for example Jonathan Wilson or Paul McInnes. This argument could be applied more broadly to say that sport fans are increasingly seen as ancillary or even dispensable to the business models of many professional sport clubs, which have become increasingly finetuned to function in a digital and platformized age. Unlike the music industry, physical attendance is not the primary, or sometimes even key, source of revenue in major league sport. In turn, media companies have become much more concerned with providing creative digital experiences for their fans, which changes the nature of fandom and the DNA of traditionally communal sporting events.

In addition, audiences are increasingly aware of the health and safety, as well as societal and environmental concerns that accompany large-scale events. For example, this year FIFA, the organizing body putting on the World Cup, had to deal with a reputational crisis due to the blockage of visas for global athletes and referees, and a fiasco with the most expensive direct purchase ticket costs ever at $500-$5,000 per regular match.

To add to that, FIFA allowed the official resale of tickets and created its own platform for the profit and regulation of resales, which created an incendiary secondary ticket market. Furthermore, unlike the UK or Australia, where the free airing of large cultural and sporting events is considered a national right, one has to find some sort of subscription and pay to watch the World Cup in the U.S., which further enmeshes digital logics with fandom.

It’s probably fair to say that Philadelphia is not really a soccer city, and the U.S. is not a soccer nation, clearly indicated by the name given to the sport that is internationally called “football,” but my observations show that there has been a surge in collective interest and action in Philadelphia from immigrant and diasporic communities watching the matches.

As Philadelphia hosts visitors from across the globe, what effects might the tournament have on the city's cultural life, public spaces, and infrastructure?

Unlike Toronto, Philadelphia has not built any new infrastructure to accommodate the World Cup. Instead, its largest infrastructural undertaking, the upgrade of several SEPTA stations, has used the World Cup as an opportunity to accelerate pre-planned improvements. Beyond that, there has been a surge in gig jobs, some boost to local businesses, and some strain on transportation. Lemon Hill has welcomed over 100,000 people in the first four days of the World Cup for an ongoing, free, open-air watch party and brought in the same figure in dollars, $100,000, in parking tickets so far.

It’s probably fair to say that Philadelphia is not really a soccer city, and the U.S. is not a soccer nation, clearly indicated by the name given to the sport that is internationally called “football,” but my observations show that there has been a surge in collective interest and action in Philadelphia from immigrant and diasporic communities watching the matches.

There is also an interesting upcoming cultural clash of sorts because there will be an important soccer match played in Philadelphia on July 4. Not only is soccer an English/British sport played in the country and city that celebrates its independence from the latter, but socially, the two events compete for attention.

What role does sport play in facilitating communication across cultural, linguistic, and political boundaries?

A more critical answer would say that sports events like the World Cup become political battlegrounds where different actors fight for visibility and to attach their meaning to the event. If there is any doubt of the political nature of the World Cup, just consider that the Comcast executive in charge of Philadelphia Soccer 2026 is the VP for political engagement. In addition, the World Cup is politicized even further this year because Fox owns the English-language broadcast rights in the U.S. and because it takes place amongst global unrest. So, you could say that the World Cup is used as a widely recognized canvas for various actors to make their individual marks.

This year is also the most complex World Cup organization from a communication perspective since the 104 matches with 48 teams are held across three large countries, the USA, Mexico, and Canada, with three official languages. There are also some 16,000+ accredited media journalists covering the matches, though that number remains uncapped and does not begin to take into account non-accredited journalists and user-generated content.

The hosting of mega sport events like the World Cup necessitates communication across cultural, linguistic, and political boundaries; however, the value and legacy of these types of events is not a given. While sport is a powerful medium, it takes mindful planning and execution to ensure any sort of positive and long-term effects from the World Cup. And to be honest, not much of that has been seen this year.