Richard Walker explores why the biggest World Cup ever raises a bigger question for brands, media owners and experience-led businesses: does more content really create more engagement?
I don’t think I have ever felt less excited about an upcoming World Cup. Which feels almost sacrilegious to write.
Let me be clear, I am still excited. It is still the World Cup. I will still watch loads of it. I may still convince myself that England have a chance. So this position is all relative.
I am NOT saying I am not interested. I am saying I have not quite got the usual buzz yet. The fever. The mania. The feeling that, for a few weeks, normal life should rearrange itself around group-stage fixtures involving teams I have barely watched before.
NB: pretty sure I will be tuning in to watch some of the lesser-seen Cape Verde, Curaçao, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Iraq, DR Congo, Scotland… regardless of some tricky kick-off times.
From a few anecdotal chats with other football fans, I do not think I am completely alone. Some of that might just be timing. Tournament narratives often take a while to form. Some of it may be football fatigue. As a Leeds United fan, I should probably be more energised after a successful season back in the top flight. But even that came with a fair bit of weariness about the modern game: wrestle-mania in penalty areas, VAR inconsistencies, tactical caution, cheating, time-wasting goalkeepers. “Dark arts”, as fans of the clubs deploying those tactics call them.
NB: of course I will be tuning in to watch Bielsa’s Uruguay. ¡VAMOS URUGUAY, CARAJO! The love for El Loco still runs deep.
I digress.
There is something else that feels very different about this year’s tournament. The 2026 World Cup is big. Really big. Forty-eight teams big. One hundred and four matches big.
Woweee.
That is more football than is physically watchable, regardless of time zones, domestic responsibilities, work commitments, sleep requirements, etc.
Which raises a bigger question that goes well beyond the football…
At what point does more content stop creating more engagement?
And, more importantly, when does an organisation become so focused on giving people more of the “what” that it loses sight of the “why”? Why should the audience care?
The biggest world cup ever
There is an obvious case in favour of the expanded World Cup. More nations get to take part. More fans see their country represented. More stories can emerge from places that have rarely, or never, had this kind of global platform. Which is obviously good.
A genuinely global event. Lots of first-time qualifiers. Several returning after years away, including Scotland and “Haaland’s Norway”. There will be new cultural moments too. Gladly not any vuvuzelas this time around. But the kind of new and unexpected moments that help make international football feel different from the club game.
So my argument is not against expansion in principle. It is grounded in the fact that growth often creates trade-offs. And I am not talking about the conjoint type.
The tournament is not just bigger. It is structurally different. A bigger group stage. More matches. More qualification routes. More teams progressing. Potentially, more moments that feel easier to miss. Which, to me, feels like a MASSIVE compromise.
More reach does not automatically mean more attention. More availability does not automatically mean more appetite. More content does not automatically mean more engagement.
Jeopardy is part of the “product”
Given the World Cup is heading stateside, forgive me for channelling Chris Kempczinski, McDonald’s CEO. If the World Cup was a product, one of the key ingredients would be jeopardy.
Every game should matter. Every moment should feel important. The fact that a single bad result could change everything really matters.
For 2026, several teams finishing third from four in the group stages will progress to the knock-out rounds. Which means a decent portion of jeopardy is missing. Particularly when many of the games, on paper at least, might not be highly competitive.
Jeopardy creates attention. It gives people a reason to watch matches they might otherwise ignore. It makes neutral games feel like essential viewing. Something genuinely consequential might happen that cannot be missed.
If the safety net feels wider, and only one or two teams per group are eliminated, the early stages may lose some of that edge. The audience may not just physically switch off. They may switch off emotionally too.
The matches still happen. The content is still there. The broadcast slots are still filled. The highlights are still available online. But the emotional stakes can feel thinner.
Addicted to MORE? Audiences do not experience scale the way organisations do
The same principles are true for brands and businesses.
Organisations often love scale. MORE and MORE. Products. Channels. Features. Formats. Stores. Touchpoints. Content. Choice. Membership tiers. Events. More and more reasons to engage.
On paper, MORE can look very sensible. It creates more opportunities. More routes in. More occasions. More chances to personalise. More chances to cross-sell, upsell, re-target, re-engage and re-message. But audiences do not experience scale as a strategy document. They experience it as a choice. And choice can be brilliant. Until it becomes hard work.
That is the bit businesses often underestimate. MORE can create abundance, but it can also create dilution. It can make the offer feel richer, but harder to navigate. It can increase opportunities to engage, but reduce the perceived importance of any one moment. If everything is available, what is unmissable?
If there is always more to watch, read, buy, visit, browse or attend, what deserves attention now? If the system keeps expanding, what is the story that holds it together?
Neglecting the WHY? The problem is not volume. It is meaning.
Back to the football. The narrative may still come. It probably will.
A breakout player. A surprise team. A last dance. A controversial decision. An unbearable penalty shootout. These things have a habit of arriving once the football actually starts. That unpredictability is also a special ingredient.
But right now, the build-up feels dominated by the “what”. One hundred and four games of “what”. Not quite enough of the “why”.
Why this tournament? Why this format? (we assume corporate greed). Why this match? Why now? Why should I care? That is the question every expanded offer needs to answer.
Because a bigger offer needs a clearer reason to care, not just a bigger footprint.
A bigger campaign needs a sharper story, not just more media spend / impressions. A bigger loyalty programme needs a stronger value exchange, not just more mechanics. A bigger visitor experience needs better pacing and emotional payoff, not just more things to do.
When optimisation flattens the experience
Another thing that has been pecking away at the “traditional” fan (a label I am happy to wear), is that modern football has become incredibly optimised. That is not necessarily a criticism. Players are fitter, coaching is smarter, analysts are better, marginal gains are everywhere.
But optimisation can make things more efficient without making them more enjoyable. You can see it in the rise of set-piece specialism, tactical caution, defensive structures, game management, tactical fouling and the general sense that every corner now involves five people wrestling while the refs pretend not to notice.
Again, this is not just a point about tactics. It is a point about experience. When organisations optimise around measurable outcomes, they can accidentally strip out the qualities that made people care in the first place.
Efficiency is not the same as enjoyment.
Frequency is not the same as anticipation.
Availability is not the same as value.
Engagement is not the same as attention.
Attention is not the same as emotional investment.
Many businesses now operate in environments where the measurable stuff is easier to see than the meaningful stuff. You can see impressions, clicks, dwell time, conversion, repeat purchase, attendance, app opens, basket size and completion rates.
It is harder to see fatigue. Confusion. Passive compliance. Quiet dis-engagement. The sense that people are still technically participating but caring a little less.
The hidden value of constraint
Jeopardy creates focus, whereas scarcity can create anticipation and constraint can create meaning.
A tightly curated range can feel more useful than infinite choice. A single flagship event can create more cultural weight than a rolling calendar of minor activations. This does not mean brands should artificially make everything difficult, limited or exclusive. Nobody needs more fake scarcity in their life!
But sometimes the constraint is part of what makes the experience work. I think that is what keeps the Olympics so special too. All happening across just two weeks every four years.
Yes, the World Cup is also every four years. But then there is the Euros. The new World Club Championship. The women’s equivalent tournaments. The Premier League starting up again in August. Don’t miss the unmissable fixture release day exclusively live on Sky Sports, folks. I am being facetious. I think I have been told by the media that a sporting event or fixture is “unmissable” just too many times now. Fatigue has set in.
For the World Cup, the constraint was always part of the magic. Not everyone qualified. [Ahem, Italy]. Matches felt harder to ignore. Mistakes felt harder to recover from. There was more pressure, and with pressure came meaning.
What brands can learn from the 104-match World Cup
Look, expansion is not always bad. Shareholders demand growth, right? But it needs insight. Obviously.
The commercial logic of “more” is usually easier to identify than the audience impact. More content might increase reach, but does it deepen engagement? More choice might improve access, but does it make decisions harder? More touchpoints might create opportunities, but does the journey feel more fragmented? More personalisation might feel smarter, but does it make the brand any easier to understand? More availability might reduce barriers, but does it reduce anticipation?
These are not questions that can be answered properly from data alone. Operational metrics will show what people do. But not what they quietly stop caring about. That is where research can make the difference.
Audience research can help organisations understand not just whether people are engaging, but why they are engaging. What they are excited by. What they are ignoring. What feels valuable. Which moments create anticipation. Which moments create fatigue. Which parts of an experience feel essential, and which simply add volume.
The danger is not always that audiences reject the bigger offer outright. The danger is that they drift. They still browse, but with less intent. They still subscribe, but with less brand affection. They still turn up, but with less emotional investment. They still engage, but not as deeply.
Something else, or someone else, makes them care more.
So, remember to ask: why should the audience care?
I will still watch the World Cup. Obviously. Thursday 11th June, 8pm BST has been in my calendar for months. And I will still care. A random group game will suddenly feel vital. A team nobody expected will do well and become global heroes. It will get under my skin at some point, and probably quite soon.
But the important lesson is not to forget what makes people care in the first place. Keep focused on the “why”, not just blindly doing more and more and more of the “what”.
At Mustard, we help organisations understand what audiences really value, where engagement is being created or diluted, and which moments have the power to make the difference.
If you are expanding an offer, launching a new product, service or format, or trying to understand what really drives audience engagement, get in touch. We will help you de-risk decisions and make the most of the opportunities.