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How brands can boost sales during major events

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From the FIFA Club World Cup to the ICC Cricket World Cup, legions of fans gather every year to enjoy multi-week sporting extravaganzas. Friends and family cheer for their teams, companies organise outings, enthusiasts travel from overseas, and host cities buzz with excitement.

Rugby player taking a penalty kick

A large-scale sporting event brings excitement — and it also brings an economic boost. The deluge in activity leads to increases in consumer spending across industries, particularly hotels, restaurants and sports merchandise stores.

As attendance of major events climbs, so does the opportunity for retailers. According to a 2025 analysis from the Bank of America Institute, demand for spectator amusements has risen well above 2019 levels, with spending on live entertainment, like major sports events, up 25%.  

To understand the potential economic impact rising attendance may have on retailers, it can be useful to look at previous sporting events.

  • The India Premier League (IPL) — Analysis of aggregated and anonymized Mastercard data finds that the IPL series played in 2023 led to a 25% increase in in-person average daily spend in restaurants during match days vs. non-match days. [1]
  • British Open – The event, hosted in Royal Troon, generated over £303.3 million in total economic benefit for Scotland. SpendingPulse™ was used to predict the impact of the British Open occurring in July. Overall, the event was expected to generate a £30 million increase in the total retail sector. This includes about a 15% growth for the restaurant sector, translating to £8 million in restaurant sales.
  • The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup — The event, hosted in Australia in 2022, saw a surge in cross-border spend by South Asians travelling to different cities across the country where matches were hosted. Hotels, restaurants and sporting stores benefited. Aggregated and anonymised Mastercard data suggests an increasing growth in spend in hotels and restaurants from the beginning of October by outbound travelers from South Asia, peaking in the first half of November 2022.

But the boost isn’t limited to sporting events. Concerts, large conventions and trade shows, fairs and exhibitions can all impact spend in lodging, restaurants and retail.

These events present retailers with a golden opportunity to capitalize on the uptick in spending to boost revenues and make the experiences memorable, whether it be a major concert visiting their city or a World Cup match.

Capitalizing on the uptick in spending

Few experiences are as energizing as watching a World Cup match and event. Retailers can tap into this energy through strategies ranging from special promotions and discounts to travel packages.

Here are a few ways brands leverage major events:

  • Extend operating hours to accommodate fans who want to shop before or after the event
  • Organise contests and giveaways, such as trivia quizzes where winners can receive prizes, discounts or free products
  • Use social media platforms to engage customers with real-time updates, contests or to encourage user-generated content
  • Launch advertising campaigns that leverage the event’s popularity
  • Promote offers including food purchase and merchandising goods
A woman buying cheese, Sweden

How a convenience retailer saw a 2% sales increase with an offer during a major sporting event

Goal

A retailer in the convenience category wanted to drive food sales during a major televised sporting event weekend using a new digital food offer that provided a discount for purchasing large meal bundles during the event. After the campaign concluded, the retailer wanted to understand the impact of the campaign and for which customers the campaign was most successful.

Strategy

Enter Mastercard Test & Learn®, a cloud-based platform that helps organisations design and analyse in-market trends to isolate the incremental impact of an initiative and determine how to tailor and target rollout to maximise ROI.

The retailer used Test & Learn® to measure the impact of the digital food campaign. The platform first identified control customers that behave in lockstep with test customers based on historical spend pattern and loyalty tier, enabling confidence in the accuracy of results. Test & Learn® then segmented the results based on the strongest drivers of performance to identify opportunities to optimize similar initiatives in the future and develop hypotheses for future testing.

Result

Test & Learn® measured a 2% increase in transactions as a result of the offer and found that it was most successful for the following customer groups:

  • Engaging customers who spent less than $10 on food in their last transaction
  • Reactivating lapsed customers who had not shopped with the retailer in the last 30 days

The retailer successfully drove an incremental $600,000 in sales from the next two-week campaign. To further optimise campaign performance, Test & Learn® recommended providing higher threshold offers built from its model prediction to the retailer’s higher spending customers.

Overcoming the challenges of marketing during a major event

While effective marketing during a major event can provide a boost to sales, numerous brands will also be vying for your customer’s attention. Consumers may already be overwhelmed by the volume of ads they encounter, so it becomes critical to stand out in a crowded environment.

Here's how one brand broke through the noise with a well-thought-out social media campaign.

How a global bank broke through the noise with relatable content and created over 250 million impressions

One global bank aimed to drive spend on its card portfolio in India by raising visibility and consumer engagement with an ongoing social media campaign. The successful campaign was extended into Diwali to further draw customers with fresh and festive content that tapped into the excitement of this key annual festival.

Goal

The global bank teamed up with Mastercard to drive engagement for its card portfolio by leveraging relevant social media influencers from the entertainment industry. They promoted digital card usage and spend and drove new customer acquisition.

Strategy

Diwali is a key festival and major holiday in India that usually takes place in October or November each year. Because the global bank’s ongoing campaign happened to cross over to this festival season, specific assets were created for that period. As Diwali neared, the campaign focused on driving spending in the dining and travel sectors. The campaign was extended to Diwali with a fresh, vibrant look, celebrating the theme of “live the celebrations” and “live the festivities.”

The campaign took a coordinated approach across different channels. Relatable content specific to Diwali showcased how the influencers were celebrating, including a video sneak peek of how one of them celebrated at their home. The campaign’s reach and impact were maximised with creative additions such as original rap music and user-generated content. Other creative assets spanned everything from print ads and advertising on outdoor billboards to ads placed strategically in malls to drive spending prior to Diwali.

Result

Despite the considerable number of brands vying for consumers’ attention during Diwali, the campaign surpassed its target goal of reaching 2.2 million consumers and 42 million impressions. It reached 45.2 million consumers and created more than 250 million impressions, along with more than 62 million video views, well beyond the goal of 14 million video views.

Helping customers feel the excitement of a major event – even if they can’t attend

Not everyone can attend an event in person, but brands can help bring the event to fans. Making people feel like they’re part of the event can contribute to the overall strategy to capitalize on an event and create an impact for the brand. And although pent-up demand for experiences has diminished, consumers still have a strong desire to prioritize spending on “big moments.” Brands have an ideal opportunity to make deeper connections with their customers through events.

Some brands provide interactive content on their website or app, such as an event-specific game. Others share real-time match updates with statistics, insights, polls and interactive quizzes. Many offer exclusive event-related merchandise like giveaways or for people to wear while they cheer on their team from home. Whatever the tactic, brands can make major events a meaningful and fun part of the customer journey.

If the rest of the article is British English, we should make sure any of our new copy is consistent 

How a Premier League football team crafted personalised experiences around major events, increasing conversion rates and revenue per session

A consistent fixture atop the Premier League table, Tottenham Hotspur is a football club in North London built on the motto “To Dare Is To Do.”

Tottenham selected Mastercard Dynamic Yield, which helps businesses algorithmically match content, products and offers to each customer across any digital channel to increase revenue and drive loyalty. To bolster the club’s e-commerce business, a cohesive, personalised customer journey for each visitor was created.

Tottenham and Mastercard Dynamic Yield reimagined the mobile website, optimised the conversion funnel and crafted unique experiences around major events, such as match results and the launch of new uniforms, known as a “kit launch.”

Personalisation paid off, delivering positive ROI in just one month thanks to notable increases in conversion rates and revenue per session.

By personalising experiences at every stage of the conversion funnel, Tottenham created a seamless shopping experience for club supporters across devices.

Aerial of football match

Analysing results

Major events come up with some regularity, and after the event, it’s essential to analyse the results and adapt your approach for the next one. Understanding if the resources invested were justified and if your messages and visuals were effective are important steps in ensuring that future campaigns can be even more impactful.

How a CPG company measured the $1.3 million impact of game-day ads

For a major U.S. football game, a leading consumer packaged goods company (CPG) in the U.S. purchased an ad segment.

Goal

The company wanted to understand the incremental impact of their investment, but the ad’s nationwide scope meant they could not find a valid benchmark for performance.

The most accurate way to measure an initiative’s impact is with a designed test and control group. However, large-scale initiatives like football game day television ads are rolled out to everyone. Every person watching the game sees the same ads and therefore there is no control group.

Strategy

To understand the impact of their nationwide ad, the CPG company worked Mastercard Test & Learn™, an analytics platform. Test & Learn® with Causal Inference uses machine learning that capitalizes on proprietary Mastercard data and correlated market datasets to accurately quantify the performance impact of these large-scale initiatives.

Result

The CPG company was able to quantify the true impact of the ad by using this new Test & Learn® capability to create a relevant performance benchmark. The CPG company found that the ad drove $1.3 million in incremental sales across several products.

Conclusion

Major events ultimately bring every type of consumer to the field. Companies seeking to capitalise on festivals, holidays, sporting events, concerts and more can get their brands on consumers’ minds with event-driven retail campaigns.

Boosting sales around major events requires deftly aligning your brand with the excitement and enthusiasm surrounding these events. By bringing your customers into the energy around the event, brands can increase their visibility and sales opportunities. Finally, measuring and analysing enables a brand to track the success of its strategies and refine the approach so that future events can only be bigger opportunities for boosting sales and engaging customers.

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On the Ball: Local economies score when sports kick off. 5 Aug 2025. Bank of America Institute. https://institute.bankofamerica.com/content/dam/economic-insights/sports-impact-on-local-economies.pdf

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