21 Jul The Ads That Won the 2026 World Cup
The 2026 FIFA World Cup wrapped up on July 19, and while the tournament itself delivered plenty of drama, the ad breaks around it turned into their own kind of competition. TV measurement firm EDO ranked every ad that aired during the tournament using its TV Outcomes Score, which measures how much more consumer engagement an ad drove compared to the average spot during the event. A score of 1,000 means an ad drove ten times the engagement of an average World Cup ad — so the gaps at the top of this list are enormous.
Here’s how the top three shook out, and why the rest of the field has some lessons to learn.
1. Kalshi — “Dentist” ft. Timothée Chalamet
Kalshi’s “Dentist” spot, featuring Timothée Chalamet, blew past every other ad during the tournament with an EDO score of 79,599 — nearly three times the runner-up. The prediction market isn’t a household name the way its telecom and beverage competitors are, and the ad’s job wasn’t to sell a specific product so much as to make people curious enough to go find out what Kalshi actually is. Judging by the numbers, it worked. Kalshi didn’t just win the ad game once — the brand placed six different spots in the tournament’s top 75, a level of repeat presence almost no other advertiser matched.
2. Oura Ring — “World’s Smallest Ring”
Oura came in second with a score of 26,661 for its US Soccer-tied spot announcing the World’s Smallest Ring. For a wearable tech brand competing against telecom and consumer electronics giants with much bigger media budgets, that’s a strong showing — proof that a genuine product announcement, tied well to the moment, can outperform ads with far more star power behind them.
3. AT&T Home Internet — “Knock on the Block”
AT&T’s “Knock on the Block” spot took third at 16,964. It’s a genuinely original idea for a brand that spends in the billions on advertising every year, and the format clearly stood out from the sea of celebrity-cameo ads that dominated the rest of the field. For a legacy telecom brand, breaking through with something that felt different — rather than just bigger — made a real difference in the results.
The Rest of the Telecom Field: Meh
The contrast with AT&T’s showing is where things get interesting. T-Mobile’s “Go Grande” spot with Zoe Saldana landed at #70, and Verizon’s “Menace Mobile” ad with Mike Myers, Rob Lowe, and Seth Green came in at #8 among individual airings but slid as low as #177 for repeat versions. Both leaned hard on star power, and neither cracked the top tier the way AT&T did with a genuinely original concept.
There’s a fitting bit of irony buried in the data, too: YouTube TV’s own ad was literally titled “Don’t Settle for Meh,” featuring Zlatan Ibrahimović and Jason and Kylie Kelce. It landed at #7 — solidly good, but a reminder that plenty of big-name, big-budget spots this World Cup ended up exactly where that title warns against.
The Takeaway
The pattern across the top of the list is hard to miss: the ads that performed best weren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets or the most star power — they were the ones with a genuinely fresh idea (Kalshi’s curiosity play, AT&T’s block party concept) or real news to share (Oura’s product launch). Meanwhile, plenty of ads stacked with celebrities and big spend landed in the middle of the pack.
For the full ranked list of all 205 ads that aired during the tournament, see Adweek’s complete breakdown.
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