Even if you live in America, it’s been hard to miss the FIFA World Cup. The world’s biggest sporting event for the world’s most popular sport. The pinnacle of this is the final. For the first time ever, there was a halftime show, featuring Madonna, Justin Bieber, Shakira, The Muppets, and the NY Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel. You’d think that being part of one of the most watched programmes in the world would be a good thing for the NY Phil. The thing is… it’s a spectacular own goal.
Don’t get me wrong, NY Phil got some great exposure from it. Viewing figures are still coming in, but it looks like this final will eclipse the 1.5 billion people who watched the 2022 final (and is way ahead of the Super Bowl’s estimated global viewing of 180m). Then there is the online reach as well. Collaborative posts with FIFA helped them reach even more people, with one reel on Instagram being viewed by well over 6 million people.
So surely this sort of exposure is good? Well, that depends entirely on whether people liked the halftime show and whether the event you are tying yourself to enhances your brand. In both cases, this is a problematic no.