Football’s flagship tournament held every four years, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup’s 23rd edition kicked off on June 11, 2026. The 39-day-long tournament featured 104 matches and concluded on July 19, 2026, when Spain edged out Argentina 1-0 in extra time.
This edition marked a milestone, expanding from 32-team format to a 48-team format. The event was jointly hosted across 16 cities in the United States (US), Canada, and Mexico, and introduced mandatory three-minute hydration breaks in each half of every match. This translated to more broadcast hours, sponsorship inventory, ticketing opportunities, and boost in tourism. The hydration breaks opened additional commercial windows during play, worth an estimated USD 500 million for Fox, the US broadcaster. FIFA itself earned USD 15 billion from the event, exceeding its projected revenue of USD 11 billion.
From the expanded team format to the in-match hydration breaks, the structural changes to the 2026 World Cup were tailored to generate new revenue streams. At its core, sports commercialization turns competition into a revenue-generating enterprise by applying business principles like sponsorship, broadcasting rights, advertising, and endorsement deals to the sporting event. Commercialization, however, is not limited to major football tournaments. In 2026, airing a 30-second advertisement during the Super Bowl, the National Football League’s championship game, cost around excluding production costs. Despite the high price, companies invest because the event provides access to a massive audience, strengthens brand awareness, generates publicity, and can ultimately drive sales.
How the Business of Sport Grew
Modern sports commercialization began in 19th-century Britain, when industrialization, rising worker incomes, and the Factory Act of 1850 concentrated workers’ free time into Saturday. This gave sport promoters a newly leisured, urban audience to capitalize on. The next major wave emerged in the 20th century as satellite and cable television increased the number of televised sporting events, drove up the value of broadcasting rights, and created new revenue streams through subscription television and pay-per-view. Internet streaming in the 21st century further expanded global audiences and introduced digital subscription models.
Today, sport is a major component of the global economy, generating an estimated USD 2.3 trillion in annual revenue in 2025, with projections reaching USD 3.7 trillion by 2030 and USD 8.8 trillion by 2050. Professional and elite sport, participatory sport and physical activity, sporting goods, and sports tourism generated USD 2 trillion in 2025. Similarly, connected industries, including broadcast and streaming, gaming, nutrition, wearables and technology software, and sport services generated USD 300 billion.
Esports has also emerged as a major commercial segment within the sports economy. The global esports market was estimated at USD 2.3 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 9.1 billion by 2032, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.8%.
The Rewards and the Costs
Commercialization helps athletes build personal brands beyond the playing field, generating endorsement income and opportunities to enter strategic partnerships with equity stakes. Multiplatform media coverage helps them carry their brands into entertainment, video games, fashion, and post-athletic careers. For instance, David Beckham’s five-year, USD 250 million contract with LA Galaxy, Major League Soccer (MLS) team, in 2007 illustrates this scale, combining roughly USD 10 million annually in salary, USD 20-25 million a year in endorsements from Adidas, Pepsi, Gillette, and Motorola, plus image rights worth up to USD 40 million annually.
Similarly, leagues earn revenue from broadcast and media rights as networks and digital platforms compete for sports content, plus direct subscription revenue through proprietary media. In-venue revenue lets franchises earn from the venue itself through naming rights, sponsorships, and premium seating. In 2025, the NFL earned USD 14.5 billion from a combination of national media rights, sponsorships, shared revenue, and royalties.
Meanwhile, for corporate marketers, sport offers direct, repeatable access to loyal target audiences, yielding higher brand recall and likeability than standard primetime advertising. Bank of America’s then-CEO Ken Lewis, in 2009, claimed that every dollar the company spent on sports marketing earned USD 10 in revenue and USD 3 in earnings.
For media companies and broadcasters, live sport aggregates large, engaged audiences, allowing them to command premium advertising rates, while cable and wireless operators gain subscription and licensing revenue through recurring fees, data-plan adoption, tier upgrades, and consumer electronics and network infrastructure. In 2008, General Electric, as the worldwide partner of the Beijing Olympic Games, earned USD 700 million in revenue by winning 400 infrastructure projects tied to the event.
However, commercialization also has a negative side that needs deeper introspection. For instance, though commercialization brings real benefits, sport loses its value if financial return becomes the primary measure of success. Rising ticket prices and paywalled broadcasts risk pricing out fans, while athletes might be treated as tradeable assets, with overcrowded schedules driving physical exhaustion and mental health strain, and constant surveillance along with invasive biometric tracking and strict non-disparagement clauses. The rapid expansion of global online sports betting has heightened the risk of match-fixing, spot-fixing, and point-shaving, as vulnerable, lower-tier, or underpaid athletes and referees are targeted to manipulate outcomes for illicit profit. At the same time, the financial rewards of winning create incentives for doping and performance-enhancing drug use. Poorly monitored capital flows have also contributed to corruption scandals within major international sports federations, including bribery and wire fraud, and even state-sponsored doping programs. The infrastructure built for mega-events carries a real environmental cost as well. Regimes and corporations sometimes use sports mega-events or team acquisitions to sportswash their public image, diverting attention from human rights violations or environmental damage.
Nepal’s Growing Sports Market
Sports commercialization is not new to Nepal. As early as 1999, Coca-Cola backed the national football league, lending its name to the ANFA Coca-Cola National League Cup. Gorkha Brewery sponsored the national cricket team in 2002 as well. Since then, this trend has only grown and with the emergence of domestic leagues such as Martyrs Memorial ‘A’ Division League Football Championship, Nepal Super League, Nepal Kabaddi League, and Nepal Premier League (NPL), commercial viability of sporting events in the country has further expanded.
Among these, the cricket tournament, NPL, is now preparing for its third edition, moving rapidly from a modest domestic tournament to one of Nepal’s most significant commercial properties. The event was broadcast internationally by Star Sports for two consecutive seasons and is continuing for a third.
The broadcast revenue of the league also reflects its growth. The first season was streamed freely on YouTube, generating reach but little income. For the second, DishHome GO acquired digital rights for an estimated NPR 53 million (USD 348,593) under a minimum-guarantee model, with a clause entitling the Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) to 71% of OTT earnings beyond that threshold. Kantipur paid over NPR 30 million (USD 197,316) for linear television rights, and FanCode bought foreign streaming rights for NPR 20 million (USD 131,544).
Sponsorship scaled just as fast. After outsourcing sponsorship for its first edition to BrandLogiQ, a Kathmandu-based branding and marketing agency, CAN brought marketing operations in-house for season two, partnering with 86 companies in total, spanning telecoms, FMCGs, airlines, banks, insurers, hotels, fintech firms, electronics makers, and lifestyle brands. These deals were projected to generate NPR 400 million (USD 2.63 million) in revenue for CAN, nearly five times its earnings the year before, alongside sponsorship income projected at NPR 100-120 million (USD 657,721-789,266) and ticketing revenue of NPR 80-120 million (USD 526,177-789,266), with final figures still not revealed. The league’s commercial momentum continues to grow, as reflected by Xtreme Energy Drink becoming title sponsor of seven of the eight NPL franchises for the third edition.
Nepal’s rapid shift from free-to-air cricket to a structured, multi-hundred-million-rupee commercial ecosystem, achieved within just two seasons, as shown by the NPL mirrors a global pattern of leagues capturing broadcast and sponsorship value, corporations paying for access to loyal, emotionally engaged audiences, and media companies building new revenue streams around live sport.
What Nepal Needs to Get Right
Sports commercialization in Nepal is still at a nascent stage, but the early success of the NPL shows significant potential to scale further, provided the spirit of sport grows alongside the glamour of entertainment, anchored by governance, transparent financial practices, and safeguards for athletes and fans alike.
Expanding Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms to other domestic leagues would let them monetize the global Nepali diaspora through subscriptions and pay-per-view. Original shoulder programming, such as behind-the-scenes series, pre-game fan shows, and digital archives can help diversify beyond matchday revenue, sustain fan interest year-round and offset seasonal audience churn. This can be paired with offseason revenue streams like merchandise, licensing, and stadium tours.
Athletes need support both on and off the field. They should be trained to leverage social media and direct-to-fan channels to build strategic partnerships, endorsement portfolios, and post-athletic career pathways. Institutionally, active player associations and regulatory protections can help put limits on match calendars, safeguard their privacy, guarantee access to mental health support.
At the same time, national sports federations and state regulatory bodies must establish independent integrity units, transparent financial reporting, and external oversight. Combating match-fixing, doping, and financial fraud through these internal governance mechanisms is essential to maintain fair play, investor confidence, and commercial sustainability, while preserving full compliance, funding, and international eligibility from global governing bodies.
Commercial growth must also stay connected to the grassroots. Revenue generated at the top should be redistributed transparently toward school sports, women’s sports, and para-sports, while accessibility for fans should be protected through ticket price caps, preserved free-to-air broadcast access for major, culturally significant events, and a formal voice for supporter groups in decisions affecting club identity, stadium locations, and heritage. Sports organizations must hold event organizers and corporate sponsors to verifiable environmental standards, prioritizing carbon-neutral operations, sustainable construction, and ethical supply chains over short-term financial gain.
Done right, commercialization can turn Nepal’s sporting talent into a lasting growth engine, not just a passing source of entertainment.
Aaryan Kuikel is a Beed Fellow at beed management. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Kathmandu University with a major in Finance. Prior to joining beed, he interned at TEAM Ventures, an alternative investment firm, where he gained experience in financial markets, the private equity landscape, and climate investing.
