The FIFA Football World Cup in Canada, Mexico, and the United States starts in two weeks.
Movendi International together with our members is launching an initiative we have built together as a movement, with young people at the heart.
An estimated 6 billion people will watch the football tournament, including up to 1.7 billion children and young people. Alcohol companies know this, and they are gearing up to push their harmful product to as many people as possible.
Children and young people are among those it reaches most. When alcohol branding is everywhere in football, on shirts, in stadiums, across social media, it starts to feel like a normal, expected part of the game from childhood onwards.
The alcohol industry is investing heavily in the World Cup to drive up alcohol use
- The Ambev CEO described 2026 as “the year of socialisation” in his Q1 earnings call, pointing to the World Cup as a structural driver of alcohol sales and consumption – one he estimates has historically contributed 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points to annual industry growth. His alcohol corporation has already launched branded viewing arenas across five Brazilian cities.
- Parent company and alcohol industry giant AB InBev has secured a government platform in Mexico to promote its products ahead of the tournament.
- In Colombia, analysts project a 35% surge in beer sales during the tournament. These are the explicit commercial strategy of Big Alcohol.
The harms that follow are just as predictable.
Research from the UK, Brazil, and Australia consistently shows that football matches, combined with alcohol consumption, produce measurable spikes in domestic violence. An eight-year analysis of data from Greater Manchester found domestic violence peaking around ten hours after kick-off – driven by games with an earlier start time that allow a longer period of alcohol consumption.
A 2024 Brazilian study found that changes to alcohol sales policy during football matches had a significant link with violent behaviour among fans.
Alcohol is not a neutral presence at sporting events. The evidence is unambiguous on this.
When alcohol branding saturates football, from shirts and stadiums, to social feeds, it becomes woven into the fabric of the game from childhood onwards. That normalisation is by design. It is a Big Alcohol strategy. And its effects reach far beyond the stadium.
Alcohol marketing causes harm
New experimental evidence confirms that alcohol advertising works by hijacking attention and that captured attention triggers craving, which drives consumption. Researchers at Curtin University and the University of Western Australia established this causal chain for the first time, showing that directing attention toward alcohol ads increases both craving and consumption.
The findings elevate the case for banning alcohol advertising, sponsorship, and promotion to reduce the visibility of alcohol marketing, not just regulating its content.
And concerned parents are increasingly speaking up against the saturation of their kids’ environments, including sports, with alcohol promotions.
Research shows that children recognise alcohol branding from age two and link alcohol with adult life by age four – and alcohol companies know and exploit that with insidious practices that are difficult for parents to notice. In a brand new opinion column, concerned mother and child rights and public health advocate Linda de Keyser combines that evidence with lived experience of alcohol marketing at her son’s football matches to make a compelling case for bans of alcohol advertising and sponsorship.
With Belgium’s proposed advertising rules falling short of what child rights require, and the FIFA World Cup bringing alcohol promotion to an estimated 1.7 billion children worldwide, Linda calls for a public reckoning that matches the urgency of the moment.
Taking action together to visualise what we all see
Together with our members from Kenya, Latvia, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe, we have developed this joint initiative: we want to document alcohol marketing and expose it.
Please join in and share it with others to submit alcohol marketing examples linked to the World Cup.
We have prepared an online form to make it as quick and simple as possible to document alcohol marketing and interference with alcohol policies during the World Cup, wherever you are in the world.
This means anything you spot: an ad, a sponsorship, a fan zone promotion, branding on a shirt or a stadium screen, or an attempt to weaken alcohol policies for the tournament, such as extended sales hours or paused advertising rules.
A photo, screenshot, or link is ideal. If you don’t have one, a short description works too.
We will use the evidence we collect with your help in concrete ways:
- Build a case library of alcohol marketing in sports,
- Visualise people’s concern about alcohol sports sponsorship,
- Expose the alcohol industry’s marketing practices through a dedicated report, launch event, and communication campaign,
- Advocate for protecting sport from alcohol sponsorship, and
- Advance our initiative for a global binding instrument on alcohol, especially to address the predatory marketing that the WHO-Unicef-Lancet Commission has called an “existential threat” to children’s health.
Young people are not only the most exposed to this marketing, they are also among the most powerful voices for change. That is exactly why your organisations, and the young people in them, matter so much here.
Every submission counts.
