Match Ready: World Cup audience reportEstimated reading time: 2 minutes
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Match Ready: World Cup audience report

By: Epsilon Marketing | March 18, 2026
Epsilon Match Ready World Cup Audiences report cover

Match Ready: World Cup audience report

Reach, engage and convert World Cup audiences with fresh UK consumer insight built for advertisers.


This year’s World Cup is set to be the largest ever with 16 extra teams competing, resulting in 40 more matches. With over 34 million UK consumers set to tune in, this scale is an opportunity, but it also makes broad targeting inefficient. This report breaks down how UK consumers plan to watch, shop and second-screen before kick-off and throughout the tournament, plus what it means for brands that want to drive interest and sales around the event.

Key insights:

Epsilon World Cup Audience insights stats 1
Epsilon World Cup Audience insights stats 2


Insight you discover from the report:

  • A World Cup audience is not one audience: discover who’s tuning in, who’s ‘once-every-four-years’, and why demographics alone won’t cut it
  • Pre tournament intent (your biggest advantage): what consumers plan to buy before the first whistle and how to activate early without waste
  • Second screen reality: how viewers move from TV to mobile to the open web (and even to the shopping cart) during matches
  • Category-level opportunity: what shifts in tech upgrades and food & beverage purchases look like through a World Cup lens
  • Why identity-led audience targeting matters: connect fragmented signals to real people and sequence video, CTV and display campaigns while controlling reach/frequency across devices.
Epsilon World Cup Audience insights stats

Who is the report for:

  • Brand and agency teams planning World Cup-adjacent investment
  • Retailers and retail media teams looking to connect offsite audiences to onsite and in-store outcomes
  • Teams navigating identity challenges across devices and hard-to-reach environments like iOS


Download the report to discover how to win the World Cup audience

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