Viral clips are the direction in which sports viewership is headed, Serazio believes.
“Your performance across the whole arc of the game doesn’t matter as much as having a signature moment that’ll play well, that’ll reverberate in the viral confines of social media,” Serazio said.
“The viral moment has greater currency,” he said. “It’s the thing that matters more than the game itself.”
The question, though, is whether a World Cup athlete who finds themselves with millions of new fans can turn that into a career beyond the white lines of the football pitch.
“You have a window there of attention,” Sezario said. “Nobody knew who the Cape Verde goalie was… and I don’t know that they’ll know who he is after the World Cup ends.”
“Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar, Mbappe, after they retire, they’re still going to be able to do deals,” he said. Sezario said there are less examples of “athletes who have one big moment being able to leverage that post career”.
One example of successfully harnessing a social media audience is Ilona Maher, the US rugby player whose popularity soared during the 2024 Paris Olympics. Maher has her own podcast, brand ambassador roles, modelled for Sports Illustrated, and finished as runner-up in the television series Dancing with the Stars. Maher also won the Best Breakthrough Athlete Award at the 2025 ESPY Awards.
Duffy said there are long-term career opportunities available for new social media stars, but exactly how much money can be earned is hard to calculate.
The price paid for sponsored posts on social media is not as standardised as rates in traditional media, such as television commercials, Duffy said. “There are very few safeguards on what a sort of reasonable income looks like,” Duffy added.
“These are individuals whose careers so far have been hitched to soccer. So thinking about how they navigate the variability of a kind of shadowy ecosystem of the digital media economy is curious.”
The cultural currency for these viral World Cup stars is at a high point right now. What it means for their futures could depend on how well they can keep new fans engaged after the tournament ends.