That’s a lot of eyeballs—more than double the number that watched four years ago, and more American viewers than have ever tuned in to a soccer match in TV history. That means the game was a major opportunity for consumer brands, and indeed, many were on hand with signage and advertisements, including Coca-Cola and Visa, which are official sponsors of the FIFA World Cup.
But it was Nike—not even an official FIFA sponsor—that won the day, according to marketing firm Amobee Brand Intelligence. In the six-hour period beginning at the start of the game, the company tracked 2.87 million tweets having to do with the U.S. Women’s National Team or the Women’s World Cup. The lion’s share of those tweets (1.08 million) used the hashtag #USA, so the game was clearly great for American patriotism. But it was also great for Nike NKE -0.11% : According to Amobee, Nike was the most mentioned brand in tweets leading up to and during the game. Between June 6 and July 5, Amobee reports that Nike was 121% more associated to the World Cup than Adidas ADDYY -0.31% .
