‘We’re in a league of our own’: How X is planning to take over the World Cup, starting with Draw Day

The hope being that it piques enough advertisers interest to see the social network as a place to park swathes of their marketing dollars for the soccer tournament. 

“We’re in a league of our own when it comes to our ability to deliver on this intersection of live culture and sport,” Pintarelli said.

Draw Day plans

For Draw Day, X teamed up with football journalist and creator Fabrizio Romano, who currently has 26.5 million followers on the platform, to produce a variety of exclusive vertical and horizontal short-form content before, during and after the event. In particular, Romano will do a livestream after the TV broadcast of Draw Day, sharing his insider insights with his followers.

“Fabrizio is going to breaking down systematically, each of the groupings, the competitive stakes that surrounds that, but also the fun behind the scenes storylines that only someone of his stature and his access would really know, so it’ll be really fun for fans,” said Mitchell Smith, head of originals content at X.

For this year’s Draw Day, X is creating what it describes as a “fan destination experience,” like a show page, to make finding the daily content easy and accessible for sports fans, novices and experts alike. And while nothing has been officially confirmed yet, expect something even bigger for the tournament itself.

“We’re the most inherently social platform, but we now have an elevated video viewing experience,” Smith said. “And our sister company with great AI capabilities [xAI] actually gives us a massive competitive advantage because it’s easier to watch, share and have a conversation around that content than it is to get the comment section of other platforms to matter the way that the dialog does here.”

Naturally, these posts will be sponsored by brands.

“There’ll be a few marquee brands that are along for the full experience with us, including potential integrations into the live stream itself, all the way down to just pre-roll video packages where brands don’t have as big of budget,” Pintarelli said. She did add that “big brands are leaning in,” though declined to share which ones.

Romano’s content will also be branded under X’s wider “Originals” banner, making it the 30th addition in a series that includes video podcasts with the likes of Venus and Serena Williams, Ari Emanuel’s video podcast Rushmore and a daily business and finance show with Anthony Pompliano. Having released a slate of premium original content with top talent since 2024, X brought it all under one hub, “X Originals” in May 2025. These shows, which stretch across what X considers to be its most popular communities like sports, pop culture, business & finance, allow fans and X users direct access to the talent, as they talk directly to the stars, underneath each episode.

Setting the stage for the World Cup tournament and beyond

The activation will be a prelude of sorts — a practice run for how X will try and monetize the World Cup tournament next summer.

“We’re thinking about what it means for the experience on the platform for our users, also the way that creators like Fabrizio can show up with us on the platform, and then, of course, how the advertisers and brands can go along on that journey with us,” Pintarelli said. “Through all three of those lenses, it’s been very purposeful to start in this way.”

That level of planning isn’t optional. X’s struggle to convince major advertisers to spend real money on the platform has become a defining challenge. The World Cup offers a chance to break through some of that resistance and generate meaningful revenue in a compressed window, particularly for marketers priced out of official sponsorships.

“We are able to talk to all brands; it’s not exclusive to official marketing partners for the World Cup,” Pintarelli said. “You have brands that want to amplify the investment that they’ve made as an official partner of FIFA, and then you have brands that want to get into the conversation with more of a gorilla marketing tactic. And both sides of that are equally as interested and engaged in the conversation with us.”

Conversation is ultimately what X has going for it when it comes to the World Cup and sports more broadly. Despite its broader issues, the platform remains the clearinghouse for real-time sports news, transfer drama and on-field reaction. Creators like Romano routinely break developments there first, and match commentary has long found its fastest lift on the platform. 

Look at the Last World Cup in 2022, for instance. X (then-Twitter) posted that the event saw 147 billion impressions against #WC2022 globally, while there was an average of two million likes per day on the app around the conversation. Additionally, owner Elon Musk posted at the time that 24,400 tweets were posted per second during France’s goal in the final match.

“X has a really unique position, which is the home of creators, but also the sports leagues, the players and the publishers and broadcasters,” Pintarelli said. “We want to go big with all of them and be the place where they can all think really big, during what will be the largest global sporting event of our lifetime.”

And by big, Smith explained that the team is already looking to expand its pool of creators, and how they partner with them next summer — for the World Cup and other major sporting leagues.

“Within the soccer space and in other sport and conversation categories, we’re definitely looking to continue to grow our creator offering,” he said. “And the way that we empower creators to activate formally with us around original content, but also to begin activating on the platform, even outside of formal relationships with us, just by seeing the value for their content being here.”