For FIFA Club World Cup sponsor Michelob Ultra, the tournament is the midfield mark amid several summers of soccer.
Anheuser-Busch InBev’s slimmed-down beer brand is the official beer sponsor of the FIFA Club World Cup and, last year, joined Budweiser’s global beer sponsorship of the event as it arrived in the U.S. and expanded its field of participating clubs from seven to 32. While AB InBev has served as a sponsor for both FIFA’s men’s World Cup in 2022 and women’s World Cup in 2023, this year’s 63-match Club World Cup duties fall amid a strong stretch of soccer support by the company’s brands.
Last year, Michelob Ultra acknowledged the U.S.-hosted Copa América tournament by sponsoring both the U.S. and Mexican national teams. This year, the brand is putting aside national loyalties and continuing a strategy it launched during the 2024 Super Bowl: Allowing Inter Miami superstar Lionel Messi to charm the cameras (this time without Jason Sudeikis or Dan Marino) while touting its beer’s “superior” qualities.
The latest installment, “Superior Hotel,” was created with help from Wieden+Kennedy, produced by Smuggler, and has Messi playing soccer with a fellow hotel barfly for the last Michelob Ultra.
“We’re staying consistent with that core creative idea around playing for an Ultra, so that’s our hero asset,” said Ricardo Marques, svp of marketing for Michelob Ultra. “We have spots in every single match of the FIFA Club World Cup, so that will get a ton of visibility, but that’s not all.”
Michelob Ultra’s marketing presence around the FIFA Club World Cup leans less on Messi’s ad than it does on tangible experience. It’s placed life-sized cutouts of Messi in millions of stores selling Michelob Ultra across the U.S. It’s put the FIFA Club World Cup logo across its cans and bottles. It ran a contest that sent North Dakota’s Judah Negron to the tournament with New Zealand’s Auckland City FC.
