In just over 24 hours time we’ll be glued to our television sets for a month of football action from the FIFA World Cup. The global TV audience for the World Cup is estimated at 4 billion viewers, making it more popular than the summer Olympics. FIFA will make $4 billion AUD from this tournament with the bulk of money coming from advertisers.

For advertisers the World Cup is a big opportunity to create buzz and excitement in their products. Adidas has paid $215 million to be a partner for the last 4 years in the lead up to the World Cup. Visa, McDonalds, Coke, Emirates, Bud, Hyundai and Sony have all paid large sums of money to be involved in the event.

In my last blog post I touched on the fact that I hadn’t seen many ads. As expected this has changed the closer we get to the event. Present and past football stars dominate the commercials with many of them being brand ambassadors.

What TV commercials will we be watching this year?

SBS’s The World Game has posted a lot of the World Cup commercials on their website. See below for my top 5 commercials. Some of the ads released are quite long so am expecting shorter versions to appear on TV. What’s your favourite ad?

1. Adidas –  Becks, Zidane, Bale and Lucas Moura bring new meaning to indoor soccer 
2. Kia – Adriana Lima Transforms a Man Cave. A great way to convert non football fans. 
3. Beats By Dre – Staring Neymar the ad feels more like a mini movie with an awesome soundtrack. 
4. Nike Football – one for the Football purists 
5. World Cup on Twitter – Will Twitter dominate the social media landscape at this World Cup?