A shared passion for sports can unite people around the world. Whether it’s for soccer, football, basketball, hockey, or cricket, people gather in person and virtually to watch their favorite athletes and teams compete in thrilling matches. Some of the most notable sporting events—including the World Cup™ and the Olympics™—take place on an international stage.
These events promote community engagement, and a connection that is felt beyond the stadium. The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) projected the 2026 men’s World Cup™ to become a major driver of tourism in North America and to reinforce the United States, Canada, and Mexico as some of the world’s most important tourism markets. Recently, many sports organizations have begun to prioritize international endeavors to gain more fans around the world. For instance, the National Football League (NFL) has pushed to grow its global fandom, Major League Baseball (MLB) teams have now played games in more than 11 countries and territories. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) has also expanded into Canada with a new team, the Toronto Tempo.
Connecting with fans around the world includes understanding how sports culture varies from place to place. Understanding multicultural marketing is imperative for organizations to continue to connect with their audiences, and some sports leagues and organizations are providing strong examples of how it can be done both effectively and authentically. We talked with Sandeep Patnaik, portfolio director of marketing and nonprofit management programs at University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) to get his perspective.
How Does Sports Marketing Engage Global Communities?
“Stories create emotional connections and play a central role in how people evaluate brands and make decisions. Stories allow a brand to convey shared values and lived experience rather than just product features,” says Patnaik. “In sports marketing, storytelling often centers on athletes' personal and cultural journeys, which resonate because they mirror real experiences within the community.”
While storytelling is the framework of many marketing strategies, organizations must remain cognizant of the importance of authenticity and sincerity within their messaging.
“A crucial principle underlying community engagement is authenticity,” says Patnaik. “The most effective multicultural storytelling treats culture as the lens through which the story is told, not as a decorative layer added onto a generic message.”
Many organizations can learn from the marketing strategy of Nike, which has proven itself to be a leader in global marketing. By identifying global target audiences, Nike prioritizes different communities based on what is popular in that market, then localizes the message based on the culture and city. This community-first approach can reach many different audiences while seamlessly blending community, content, and commerce under one brand experience. A variety of sports organizations use this approach.
“Genuine engagement is built over time through authentic relationships with the community, and not just before a product launches,” says Patnaik. “This may involve partnering with community voices and micro-influencers and co-creating content with community members. A powerful way to engage with the community is to support causes that the community truly cares about.”
For example, during the 2026 men's World Cup™, Nike partnered with grassroots programs and created NIKE TOMA (derived from the term “Toma El Juego” or "Take the Game"), a platform focused on community-led and free-to-access street soccer and content created by younger, local communities. Nike has stated that the term “Take the Game” is meant to invite young players to make the game their own by sharing the joy, freedom, and creative expression of soccer. TOMA launched in Los Angeles in 2025 and has since expanded to communities including Lima, Peru; Mexico City, Mexico; Seoul, South Korea; and Santiago, Chile. Through this initiative, the brand presented a broader and more community-oriented narrative, and the storytelling succeeded by centering identity and lived experience first, and brand messaging second.
“While the games may be the same, the stories that resonate often focus on universal themes such as teamwork, resilience, and national pride,” says Patnaik. “These emotional narratives transcend geographical boundaries while allowing individual communities to see themselves reflected in the story.”
Another example is Nike's "Rip the Script," a six-minute film built around authentic character arcs tied to each athlete's genuine connection to soccer, rather than a straightforward celebrity showcase.
“Nike frames the campaign explicitly as culture-first: connecting athlete insight, product innovation, cultural storytelling, and marketplace execution, reinforcing the point that in multicultural marketing, storytelling is the main strategy,” says Patnaik.
Storytelling is gaining prominence in the marketing of global sporting events such as the World Cup™ or in sports leagues like the NFL, MLB, and WNBA as they expand internationally.
“Sport is a common language, but fandom is always local,” says Patnaik. “A league can broadcast the same game to millions of viewers around the world, but building loyal fans requires understanding local traditions, identities, aspirations, and cultural context.”
How Do Cultural Perspectives Shape Marketing Messages?
Within multicultural marketing, it is important to understand both cultural fluency and cultural empathy.
“Cultural fluency is the ability to understand, engage, and communicate with people from different backgrounds,” says Patnaik. “Cultural empathy is the ability to respect perspectives, values, and practices of different cultures. Both are fundamental to community engagement.”
Cultural fluency and cultural empathy combined create an intentional space to engage with audiences around the world, and culture-conscious organizations can create effective messaging that aligns their core beliefs with those of each community.
“Community engagement begins with active listening and engaging with the community,” says Patnaik. “It involves two-way dialogue and participation. It thrives on user-generated content and co-creation of content, instead of one-directional messaging.”
In multicultural marketing, cultural nuance shapes the message based on its audience, including language and dialects, values (individual achievement versus collective or community pride), visual symbolism (gestures and imagery carry different meanings across cultures), and channel preferences (some communities are reached more effectively through in-language broadcast or community media than through mainstream digital channels).
“A campaign that resonates in one country may need significant adaptation elsewhere; not because the product changes, but because the meanings associated with success, family, humor, status, or individual achievement differ across cultures,” says Patnaik.
Due to widespread globalization, major brands have learned to be consistent without being uniform. Strong global campaigns maintain a central “brand purpose” while allowing flexibility in storytelling, imagery, and execution to reflect local cultures.
"The core lesson for global marketers is that ‘multicultural marketing’ isn't a single audience; it encompasses distinct communities, cultures, and subcultures that may coexist within the same country,” says Patnaik. “Rather than asking, ‘Which country are we marketing to?’ the question ought to be ‘Which community are we trying to serve, and what matters most to them?’”
Trust is built when marketers move beyond the usual “customer segmentation” approaches and develop a deeper understanding of cultural values, traditions, and lived experiences of the communities they engage with. Brands are trusted more when they authentically portray communities rather than recycling stereotypes or superficial symbolism. A key element is involving people from communities being represented to actively participate in the creative process.
Earn a Graduate Certificate in Multicultural Marketing at UMGC
As organizations continue to expand globally, there is a growing need for marketing professionals who understand how to utilize global messaging. With a graduate certificate in multicultural marketing at UMGC, professionals can adopt innovative strategies and learn how to help their organization succeed in a culturally diverse marketplace. The program also provides a strong foundation in marketing concepts and theories and their real-life application in a multicultural marketing environment.
In the program, you can learn how to understand consumer behavior, integrated marketing communication, and various methods of digital and social media marketing. UMGC faculty have wide-ranging industry experience and can help you understand the skills and knowledge that are valuable in today's job market.
The importance of understanding multicultural marketing continues to rise, with Nielsen reporting how multicultural audiences drive huge engagement and viewership, specifically when it comes to watching sports. With this growing demand is the need for marketing professionals who have the skills needed to succeed in this marketing landscape.
Multicultural marketing continues to gain importance in how organizations connect with their audiences, from the soccer field to the office. A graduate certificate can help you gain the skills to stand out in the global workplace.
Reference on this webpage to any third-party entity or product does not constitute or imply endorsement by UMGC nor does it constitute or imply endorsement of UMGC by the third party.
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