England’s World Cup may be over, but the biggest story of the tournament isn’t who lifts the trophy, it’s how fans are experiencing football itself.
The 2026 World Cup is the first where creators, short-form video and social platforms aren’t simply covering the action – they’re helping define what the tournament means.
Siobhan McDade, Chief Publishing Officer at Jungle Creations, tackles what’s changing and what 2030’s World Cup might look like…
The 2026 World Cup is already too big to treat as a normal broadcast event. Forty-eight teams are playing 104 matches across the United States, Canada and Mexico, making it the biggest tournament in World Cup history.
That scale was always going to create noise. The more interesting shift is that the noise now has its own momentum.
By the time the tournament reached the last eight, World Cup-related content had generated 146.8 billion views across social video since 11 June, according to Tubular Labs. FIFA’s own figures tell the same story, with TikTok and YouTube already delivering 14.5 billion video views.
That changes the feel of the tournament. The match is still the anchor, but the meaning around it is being made in a lot more places. A moment on the pitch can become a fan edit, a creator bit or a joke in the group chat before the broadcast has even tidied itself up.
This World Cup has more than one front door
TikTok’s partnership with FIFA is a clear sign of that shift. FIFA has made TikTok its preferred platform partner for the 2026 World Cup, giving the platform an active role in how fans discover the tournament.
TikTok has given Creator Correspondents access to places that used to sit closer to traditional media, including training sessions to press conferences. Thirty creators from 11 countries and 22 cities are now part of how the tournament is being seen.
YouTube has moved in the same direction, with its FIFA Creator Cup streamed from New York alongside a creator roster reaching more than 350 million combined subscribers. These are becoming part of the route into the tournament, rather than a mere side show.
The same thing is happening with coverage itself. Associated Press reported that in Brazil, influencer-led platform CazéTV will stream all 104 matches, while Globo will air 55. Official coverage is stretching into looser places, beyond air-conditioned studios.
For rights holders, that brings reach and relevance. It also makes control harder. Once fans are experiencing the World Cup through several layers at once, the official story becomes only one version of the event.
The feed is making its own matchday
The phone is becoming part of how live sport feels live. Fans use it to test the mood, find the joke and work out what a moment means beyond the commentary. That is why short-form video has become so powerful in football culture. It gives the game somewhere to go after the whistle, carrying the emotion around a goal or a missed chance into places the broadcast may never reach.
FIFA says the “Viking Row” celebration became the most-viewed World Cup video on TikTok, with 174 million views. Tubular Labs also found that Belgian creator Celine Dept has generated 1.6 billion World Cup views, second only to FIFA’s official account.
That is the creator-outpacing-broadcaster point in real life. Some moments will stick because fans gave them a better afterlife than the match coverage ever could.
Brands need to be close enough to catch the weird bits
The 2026 World Cup is becoming more interesting for brands, and probably more awkward too.
Plenty will treat it as a huge media moment and try to buy their way into the noise. The smarter work will come from being close enough to spot what fans are actually making of the tournament.
For UK audiences, North American time zones have changed the mood, with some games becoming late-night events and giving food, drink and hospitality brands a more natural reason to be there.
The better opportunity is harder to plan. Scotland fans drinking Boston bars dry became a story because it was chaotic, funny and very real, with ESPN reporting that one Boston taproom ran out of its flagship lager after fans drank four times its usual amount.
That kind of moment is why brands need people on the ground, watching the tournament as fans are actually living it. The risk is football cosplay. Fans will spot it quickly, and when the conversation is moving through creators and fan communities at speed, a weak idea may become part of the joke.
The next World Cup cycle will be even less tidy
This tournament already feels like a transition point. The broadcast still delivers the big communal moments. England in a knockout game will still pull people into pubs, living rooms and fan parks, hopefully with less beer flung over everyone’s heads. But the story is moving quickly, shaped by fan edits and creator access.
By 2030, this may all feel fairly normal and treating the tournament as one big appointment in the calendar will start to feel out of date. It will behave more strangely than that.
The camera is now in the hands of the people watching and reshaping the tournament as it happens. That is what is making 2026 feel genuinely different.