- 6. August 2026

Football's Biggest Tournament Also Played Out on AI Platforms

Maite Azkuna
Maite Azkuna
Senior Analyst, Marketing Content & Insights
Comscore

During the 2026 tournament, 14.3 million prompts related to the “World Cup” were recorded across artificial intelligence (AI) platforms.

Within the digital landscape, football supporters have long relied on traditional search engines, sports media and social platforms to keep up with the game's biggest tournaments. Today, AI platforms powered by large language models (LLMs) have become another source of information, allowing users to ask questions and receive answers directly.

From Mexico and South Africa kicking off the tournament on June 11th, to Spain lifting the trophy on July 19th, we analysed the digital audiences’ usage of the world’s leading AI platforms*. World Cup related prompts totalled 14.3 million, spread across 9.7 million conversations, carried out by 5.5 million unique visitors.1

Including the fortnight before kick-off, AI conversation peaked during the opening stages of the tournament. The group stage generated 4.8 million conversations, in the extended period when all 48 teams competed. As the knockout rounds progressed, conversation gradually declined, with only a modest increase around the semi-finals and the final stage.

Breaking down AI conversations by country reveals where interest in the FIFA World Cup was strongest. The United States, one of the three host nations, generated the highest share of AI conversations, accounting for 15% of total conversations about the tournament, followed by India (13%). Argentina, Brazil and Mexico ranked next, each accounting for over 5% of the total.

Of these numbers, India stands out in particular. Despite not being represented at the 2026 global tournament, and in a cricket-dominated market, the nation generated the second-highest volume of AI conversations. This aligns with a broader pattern of growing football interest in the market. As early as December 2025, we recorded exceptionally high levels of social media engagement around Lionel Messi's visit to India, a trend highlighted in our report produced in partnership with IAB SEA + India.

Following our analysis of the FIFA World Cup semi-finals, where we explored the social buzz generated by the tournament's biggest stars. Building on that analysis, we looked into how those same players were discussed across AI platforms. We tracked conversations mentioning Kylian Mbappé (France), Harry Kane (England), Lamine Yamal (Spain) and Lionel Messi (Argentina) and from the semi-finals through to the final.

Finalists Lionel Messi (137k conversations) and Lamine Yamal (41k conversations) dominated player conversations, while Kylian Mbappé and Harry Kane lagged behind with less than five figures.

Other footballers who did not reach the final stages of the tournament also attracted significant attention across AI and social media. Norwegian Erling Haaland, for example, generated 79k AI conversations during the World Cup while gaining 41 million new followers across Instagram, Facebook, X and YouTube.2 He was also featured in a large number of fans-created memes, many of which he later playfully reacted to in an Instagram post that generated more than 8 million actions.3

The FIFA World Cup 2026 also serves as a global example of how audiences uncover and explore information across both social media and AI platforms. The two ecosystems are closely connected, as AI assistants can surface and reference publicly available content, including social platforms.

Understanding how digital users shift between social and AI is becoming increasingly important for brands and publishers– in our upcoming The State of Social 2026 we'll examine through our cross-platform measurement lens where these two environments intersect and what this means for understanding digital audiences, you can register here.

What this means for brands and media

Events such as the FIFA World Cup highlight the value of measuring audience behaviour across digital environments. Beyond revealing when interest peaks or where conversations take place, it is now possible to examine how audiences use AI to explore a topic, how many unique visitors mention a brand or event, which competitors are referenced alongside it, and how these behaviours evolve over time. Merging these insights in a cross-platform view of digital activity provides a broader outlook of how audiences discover and engage with information.

If you would like to understand our measurement in AI environments and what it means for your strategy, contact us.

Notes:

- “Conversations” definition: The total number of conversations during the reporting period
Each conversation may contain one or more prompts. Conversations are measured at the conversation-day level, meaning a conversation continued on a different day is counted as a separate conversation.

- “Prompt” definition: The total number of prompts during the reporting month. A prompt is an individual question, request, or instruction entered by a user within a conversation.

1 Source: Comscore AI intelligence, Total audience, Desktop, AI (LLMs) platforms, “World Cup” related content across 7 languages (English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish), From 11 June to 19 de July 2026, Global.

2Source: Comscore AI intelligence, Total audience, Desktop, AI (LLMs) platforms, %haaland% , “World Cup” related content across 7 languages (English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish), 11 June -19 July 2026, Global / Comscore Social, Metrics & Trends, Erling Haaland (NO), Platforms: Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube, From 11 June to 19 de July 2026.

3 Source: Comscore Social, Erling Haaland (NO), Instagram, Selected content, July 2026.

*AI platforms included the following AI (LLMs) assistants and chatbots: DeepSeek, Google Gemini, OpenAI ChatGPT, Perplexity, Anthropic Claude, Microsoft Copilot and X Grok.