The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicked off last week, but inside a Stamford office tower, the tournament has effectively been underway for two years.
That’s where Octagon, one of the world’s largest sports marketing agencies, has been preparing for the biggest assignment in its 44-year history: running the on-the-ground marketing for eight of the tournament’s official sponsors across all 16 host cities in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
The sponsors include familiar U.S. brands — Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bank of America and The Home Depot — alongside Aramco, the Saudi energy giant.
All told, the marketing efforts Octagon manages for its various World Cup clients total more than $1 billion.
“That’s a significant amount for any agency to have concentrated in a single event,” Lou Kovacs, Octagon’s president of marketing, recently told the Hartford Business Journal.
Once a generation
Founded more than four decades ago, Octagon began as a talent management firm before expanding into sports marketing. Today, the company says it employs about 900 people in the United States, more than 1,200 worldwide and manages nearly $5 billion in sponsorship spending annually.
It operates from dual headquarters, with its corporate marketing division based in Stamford and its global talent and properties operation headquartered in McLean, Virginia.
In 2025, the agency became part of Omnicom Group following the advertising conglomerate’s acquisition of Octagon’s longtime parent, Interpublic Group.
Octagon has worked on 11 World Cups, but the 2026 tournament presents a unique opportunity because many of its clients already have established businesses in the North American cities and regions hosting matches.
That was not the case at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where many sponsors were trying to connect with fans in a market where they had little day-to-day presence, Kovacs said.
The U.S. is hosting the World Cup for the first time since 1994, and the 2026 tournament is the largest in FIFA history. The field has expanded from 32 to 48 teams, with 104 matches scheduled over 39 days across the United States, Mexico and Canada.
FIFA has compared the event to staging 104 Super Bowls.
“Each one of these matches will be a cultural phenomenon,” Kovacs said. “Think about it this way: how do you aggregate an audience around a communal activity that people are deeply passionate about? There just hasn’t been anything else like it.”
The tournament’s size has translated into major spending by sponsors, many of which use the event to entertain clients, engage customers and raise brand visibility.
FIFA expects to generate nearly $2.7 billion in sponsorship and marketing revenue from the 2026 World Cup, according to projections cited by the Sponsorship Marketing Association. Overall spending by advertisers and marketers tied to the tournament could reach $10.5 billion globally, according to Forbes.
Playing at home
The tournament’s scale has also created a massive workload for the companies supporting FIFA’s sponsors.
Kovacs said Octagon’s work at the World Cup generally falls into three areas.
One involves creating fan experiences at FIFA fan festivals and sponsor-branded spaces inside stadiums. Octagon designs and builds the branded booths, photo installations and interactive features that draw spectators in, and staffs them with brand representatives.
Another area focuses on corporate hospitality. The company secures tickets to high-demand matches, books hotel rooms, coordinates transportation and manages premium viewing experiences for clients and business partners.
Octagon also works with former players, celebrities and influencers who represent sponsors at tournament events and on social media.
Kovacs pointed to several examples of the company’s work.
For Anheuser-Busch InBev, Octagon helps support the brewer’s Man of the Match promotion. At each game, the winning player receives the award and fans have an opportunity to pose for photos and share them online.
Months before kickoff, Octagon planned and managed Coca-Cola’s FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour, which brought the World Cup trophy to 75 stops in 30 countries.
In total, Octagon is running more than 725 experiential events and 150 viewing parties at the World Cup, while managing more than 62,500 tickets and 10,000 hospitality guests.
To support those efforts, the company has hired more than 500 temporary workers since January, part of more than 700 Octagon employees working on the event in all — from CEO John Shea down through the finance, legal and people teams.
Many of the temporary roles go to college students, giving Octagon a chance to identify future talent while providing students with experience in the sports industry, Kovacs said.
“There are people at Octagon today who worked as interns on the ’94 World Cup or the ’96 Olympics,” he said. “This event will be a lot of people’s first job in the industry, and hopefully among that group will be some of its future leaders.”
Reaching fans
Octagon’s work at the World Cup reflects broader changes in how companies market to consumers and business customers.
As consumers become harder to reach through traditional advertising, companies are investing more in live events and experiences, said Stefan Hock, an associate professor of marketing at UConn.
“The growing emphasis on experiential activations reflects a broader shift in marketing from exposure to engagement,” said Hock, who played Division I soccer.
Not every sponsor is pursuing the same objective.
Hock said Bank of America, a first-time World Cup partner, is likely looking to strengthen relationships with customers who already know the brand. Aramco, meanwhile, is trying to raise its profile in the United States, and its target audience likely extends beyond fans attending matches.
“I don’t think Aramco expects a casual American fan to buy anything,” he said. “Their audience may really be policymakers, talent, investors and global business partners.”
Hock said the real test is whether sponsors turn that attention into business activity by hosting clients, collecting customer data, generating sales leads and making people more likely to buy.
“Without a clear plan, it is basically expensive logo rental,” he said.
Kovacs said Octagon tracks metrics including fan engagement, social media activity and purchasing behavior. Pre-tournament sweepstakes and ticket promotions “massively outperformed anything these clients have done before with a sponsorship,” he said.
Kovacs said the World Cup’s appeal extends beyond consumer marketing because it also provides opportunities to build relationships with corporate clients.
“The opportunity to host your best customers at matches that people desperately want to attend is incredibly compelling,” he said.
