I read a piece in iNews about David Beckham’s World Cup advertising takeover, and honestly, the whole thing feels absolutely absurd.
If you’re watching the World Cup in the UK, you get a fairly dignified broadcast. A bit of studio chat, some sensible punditry, the usual adverts, and then back to the football. But if you’re watching in North America, it sounds like you’re trapped inside a David Beckham simulator. Or fantasy. Or nightmare. I’m still not sure which.
Thanks to the American networks aggressively commercialising the tournament, especially around things like hydration breaks, Beckham is everywhere. Not just popping up now and again, either. Properly everywhere. According to the reports, he’s been involved in a string of World Cup campaigns worth around £19 million, fronting or appearing in ads for brands ranging from crisps and burgers to banks, beer, DIY stores and telecoms giants.
At some point, that stops being clever marketing and starts becoming genuinely absurd.
The crowning achievement has to be the Home Depot campaign, “Build It Like Beckham”, which appears to ask viewers to believe that a multi-millionaire global superstar, former England captain and co-owner of an MLS franchise spends his weekends wandering down a retail aisle looking for a five-gallon bucket of paint and a circular saw. Immediately after that, he can apparently reappear for Bank of America, giving off the calm, reliable energy of a man who definitely wants to talk to you about retail banking.
Nobody buys it, do they?
That’s the strange thing about this level of advertising. Beckham has become so recognisable, so safe, and so commercially polished that he almost doesn’t need to have any connection to the product at all. He doesn’t have to convince you he loves the burger, uses the phone network, banks with the bank, shops for power tools, or chooses his crisps based on deep personal conviction. He just has to appear, smile, nod at something, raise a glass, or look vaguely amused by whatever scripted nonsense is happening around him.
And to be fair, from a brand point of view, you can see the attraction. Active players carry risk. If Jude Bellingham, Lionel Messi, Lamine Yamal or any other current star has a bad tournament, gets injured, misses a penalty, or watches their team crash out early, the shine comes off them almost instantly. Beckham is completely insulated from the actual football. He doesn’t have to win a match. He doesn’t have to stay fit. He doesn’t even have to do punditry.
He just exists, beautifully lit, endlessly bankable, and permanently available.
That’s probably why advertisers love him. He’s football-adjacent without being vulnerable to football. He gives brands the World Cup glow without the inconvenience of results, form, tactics, injuries, VAR decisions or England doing England things. He’s not there to represent the tournament as much as float above it, smiling down from the corporate hospitality suite.
Still, seven campaigns around one tournament is wild. Lay’s had him playing with the idea of fans jumping on World Cup bandwagons. Adidas put him in a glossy football dreamscape alongside Messi, Bellingham, Lamine Yamal and Timothée Chalamet. McDonald’s had him in another big, highly visible campaign. Stella Artois used him for the ritual of fans gathering in bars. Home Depot leaned into the American backyard World Cup idea. Verizon and Vodafone covered the telecoms angle, depending where you were watching. Bank of America rounded it all off, because apparently even football needs a sensible current account.
None of this is a criticism of Beckham personally, really. He’s been doing this for decades, and he’s clearly very, very good at being David Beckham. In some ways, this is the natural end point of his post-football career. He was never just a footballer, even when he was playing. He was a brand before most footballers realised they were allowed to be brands.
But there’s something very funny about the 2026 World Cup being sold back to viewers through one man’s face, over and over again, until the actual football almost feels like the bit between the Beckham adverts.
Maybe that’s the modern World Cup now. Less a football tournament, more a global marketing platform with a ball occasionally rolling through it.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, David Beckham is smiling, probably holding a crisp, standing near a barbecue, thinking about banking, while pretending he’s just popped into Home Depot for a bit of timber.
Got a thought on this? Share this post or say hello elsewhere online.