World Cup 2026: why retail needs to play in two halves

Imagine the fan in front of the TV, cell phone in hand, hastily deciding to buy a product he saw advertised between one bid and the next. This scene, previously secondary, has become a source of revenue that a large part of Brazilian retail still does not know how to meet. And it represents the second of two periods of consumption that the 2026 World Cup will impose on brands.

A recent survey by Rakuten Advertising shows that 91% of Brazilians intend to buy a product or service motivated by competition. The number is high, but it misleads anyone who reads it as a single demand. It is divided into two distinct behaviors, and it is precisely this division that requires companies to have finer planning of inventory, technology and delivery throughout the tournament.

The majority of the market, 63% of consumers, will anticipate purchases for the weeks and months before kickoff. It is planned consumption, focused on higher value goods — televisions, household appliances, decoration items to receive at home. Here the buyer has time and carries out research, compares prices and follows a predictable path. Brands can work with content marketing and attracting long-term traffic, as they always have.

The real challenge lies with the other 16%, who will only decide what to take with the games going on. This audience responds to impulse, triggered by a goal, a meme or a promotion that appears on the screen at that moment. For him, the interval between realizing the desire and completing the order shrinks from days to just a few minutes.

It is on the smartphone that this sale is won or lost. Fans watch the match on television with the device next to them, and that's where they decide. A page that takes time to load and a checkout in several stages are, today, the direct reason for an abandoned cart during the match break, and no longer a simple usability issue.

And none of this can be sustained without delivery. In a competition with matches spread over weeks, a promotion lasting just a few minutes becomes meaningless if the deadline doesn't keep up with the consumer's rush. Same-day delivery, shipping the next day and click and collect Today, these are sales arguments that actually convert and build loyalty. Logistics became part of the funnel, not its successor.

To capture this last-minute audience, marketplaces tend to dominate. They bring together variety, competitive prices and short deadlines in one place, where the customer usually already has a saved registration and card. For the industry and the retailer, being well positioned and with stock integrated on these platforms will be decisive, after all, the search for a last minute item almost never starts on the brand's own channel.

The 2026 World Cup should repeat, in retail, a maturity that Black Friday has already demanded: big dates can no longer be resolved only in marketing; they depend on the synchronization between technology, channels and operations. Anyone who arrived at the tournament thinking that the media was enough will discover the bottleneck in delivery and checkout. Those who understand that, in this World Cup, customer preferences are redefined with every whistle, come out ahead.

*Alexandre Mendes is Partner-CMO at Lope Digital Commerce, a company belonging to the TTX Group specialized in digital transformation, with complete and integrated management of the entire operation. Based on strategic planning, it develops digital ecosystems with technologies (proprietary and conventional), channel management, logistics operations, customer service and market intelligence.