105 SEC Filings Mention the World Cup in 2026 — Visa's Explains a 44% Marketing Jump

Every World Cup sponsorship deal gets announced with a press release. Far fewer get explained in a legally binding document filed with a financial regulator. Visa's and Host Hotels & Resorts' most recent quarterly reports both do exactly that — naming the FIFA World Cup 2026 by name as a reason their numbers moved the way they did. We pulled both filings directly from SEC EDGAR to see exactly what they say.

What Visa told investors

Visa Inc. filed its 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026 on April 29, 2026. Buried in the "Growth in value-added services revenue" discussion is this sentence:

"Growth in value-added services revenue over the three and six-month prior-year comparable periods was primarily due to underlying business drivers, which included client consulting and marketing engagements... and demand for marketing services increased primarily due to sponsorship events, including the FIFA World Cup 2026™ and the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026."

A few paragraphs later, discussing operating expenses directly:

"Marketing expenses increased over the three and six-month prior-year comparable periods primarily due to higher spending for client marketing and various campaigns, both driven in part by the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 and the FIFA World Cup 2026™."

The actual dollar figures behind that second quote:

Marketing was the single fastest-growing line in Visa's entire expense base that quarter — growing more than 10x faster than total operating expenses on a six-month basis. Visa is explicit that the World Cup isn't the only driver (the Winter Olympics ran February–March 2026, squarely inside this reporting period), so the 44%/39% figures can't be attributed to the World Cup alone. What's notable is that Visa chose to name the tournament specifically, by its full trademarked name, rather than gesture vaguely at "major sporting events."

What a hotel REIT told investors

Host Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: HST), which owns luxury and upper-upscale hotels across the US including properties in several World Cup host cities, filed its Q1 2026 10-Q on May 6, 2026. Its "Outlook" section — a forward-looking read on the rest of the year, not a report on what already happened — reads:

"Expectations for the remainder of the year reflect a continuation of this trend in a stable operating environment, with leisure transient strength bolstered by special events, including the FIFA World Cup games, and modest improvements to short-term group booking trends."

That sentence sits right next to Host's actual Q1 results, which give useful context for what "special events" can do to a hotel portfolio's numbers — just not from the World Cup, since Q1 (January–March) ended before the tournament began. The standout in Host's own Q1 data was its San Francisco/San Jose market, where comparable RevPAR grew 25.6% year-over-year — a figure the filing attributes explicitly to a different event:

Host's own filing attributes that specific jump to the Super Bowl, not the World Cup — a useful reminder that "special event bolstered our numbers" is a sentence hotel REITs write often, and precision about which event matters. The World Cup mention is squarely about what Host expects for Q2 and Q3, the quarters that actually contain the tournament — those results aren't filed yet.

It's not just these two

A full-text search of SEC EDGAR for the exact phrase "World Cup" across every 10-Q, 10-K, and 8-K filed between January 1 and July 21, 2026 returns at least 105 filings. Most are large, recognizable companies whose business has a plausible connection to a global sporting event — media and broadcast rights holders, travel and hospitality operators, retailers, and ad-adjacent platforms:

We verified Visa's and Host Hotels' quotes directly, in full, in the body of their own 10-Q filings (see the sections above). The other 18 companies here are listed by name, ticker, and filing metadata only — confirmed to have a 2026 filing that matches "World Cup" in SEC's full-text search, but not individually read line-by-line the way Visa's and Host's were. Some portion of the full 105-filing count is likely coincidental (a company using the phrase in an unrelated sense); this table is our best-effort curation down to companies with an industry-plausible connection, not a claim that every one of these discusses the FIFA tournament specifically.

What's missing: Coca-Cola hasn't reported yet

Coca-Cola is one of FIFA's seven Tier-1 "FIFA Partners" — the same sponsorship tier as Visa — and has held that spot since 1978. It's the most obvious company to check for a World Cup mention. As of this writing, neither The Coca-Cola Company nor its largest US bottler, Coca-Cola Consolidated, has filed a 2026 quarterly report that covers the tournament window; their most recent filings mentioning "World Cup" predate the event entirely (Coca-Cola's most recent is an 8-K from February 10, 2026, reporting Q4 2025 results). Coca-Cola's Q2 2026 earnings — the quarter that actually contains the World Cup's opening weeks — hadn't been filed as of July 21, 2026. When it lands, it's the natural follow-up check.

How we measured this

Pulled live via Crawlora's SEC EDGAR full-text search (sec-full-text-search, forms 10-Q/10-K/8-K, January 1 – July 21, 2026, query "World Cup") and filing-section extraction (sec-filing-sections) on July 21, 2026. The full-text search returned 105 total matches; Visa's and Host Hotels' quotes were independently verified by pulling the complete text of the relevant Item (Item 2, "Management's Discussion and Analysis," in both cases) directly from their 10-Q filings and confirming the exact sentences. A real limitation surfaced during this process: many 8-K filings route their actual financial commentary to a separate press-release or investor-presentation exhibit (Exhibit 99.1) that the section-extraction endpoint doesn't reach — Airbnb's, Fox's, and Apple Hospitality REIT's 8-Ks all matched the full-text search but couldn't be verified down to the exact sentence this way, which is why they're listed by metadata only rather than quoted.

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