It’s been 30 years since the U.S. last hosted the World Cup.
In that time, the Hispanic population has nearly tripled, and nearly 45 million people in America speak the Spanish language at home. That makes the U.S. the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world, after Mexico.
The face of the country has changed, but advertisers haven’t clocked it. In the same time period, Spanish-language programming spend has gone from 3% to 4% of total ad budgets. A quarter century of demographic transformation answered with one percentage point.
Meanwhile, the audience grew into a $2 trillion economy. Hispanics drove nearly 31% of the country’s GDP growth in 2023, but Spanish-language programming accounts for just 4.7% of advertising reach.
The gap is immense, but Telemundo’s new World Cup campaign flips the script. While many World Cup advertisers are focusing on the star players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, Telemundo has taken a different approach. It’s centering on the people watching the game, and speaking directly to them—en español.
Its campaign asked a question: “¿Y tú, con quién lo vas a ver?” (“Who will you be watching with?”) It’s rooted in core Latino values of family and community, built on the simple idea that sports bring people together—and that who you watch with matters more than who you’re cheering for.
For many Latinos, the people they’re watching with will determine the languages in which they watch the matches. Not language. Languages. Both Spanish and English have important roles to play.
The leagues saw Spanish coming long before advertisers did
The changing role of Spanish within the Super Bowl Halftime Show earlier this year gives us a sense of how truly great marketing evolves continuously, to reflect the changing composition of its audience.
Gloria Estefan headlined Super Bowl 26 in 1992, where she commanded the stage like a Latina, but performed in English. In 2020, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez were headliners, where Spanish was woven into the performance, but wasn’t yet the main act. In 2026, nearly every word of Bad Bunny’s performance was in Spanish (except “God Bless America,” in English).
Spanish has progressed on the world’s biggest stage decade by decade, just as it did within the world’s biggest consumer market. The leagues have long understood the importance of reaching this demographic, and they’ve continually put their marketing money where the mouths are. Those mouths no longer speak just English.
Representation in media actually moves the meter.
When Zappi surveyed U.S. Hispanics on their perception of Bad Bunny’s performance, we found that more than half (54%) said it felt meaningful to them, compared to just 30% of non-Hispanic viewers. And in Puerto Rico—where Bad Bunny is from—that figure jumped to 89%.
The opportunity cost of a monolingual mindset
59% of U.S. Hispanics also report speaking English very well. Among 5-to-17-year-olds, that figure jumps to 76%. Many younger generations speak Spanish with abuelita, but English at work, and a mix of both at home. The same person watching the World Cup is shifting languages across the room, and often, within the same sentence.
It’s a creative problem just as much as a media planning one. Marketers who pick just one linguistic lane risk missing the household. The brands that win consumer attention in the World Cup and beyond will stop asking “which language?” and start asking “which moment, with whom?” Spanish for the radio ad that plays in the kitchen, English on the teenager’s mobile app, and both languages when the family is on the couch together watching the game. Each is a real opportunity. None of them is well served by a 30-second spot with a half-hearted translation.
Most U.S. Spanish speakers don’t identify as monolingual, monocultural, or even as being part of just one nation. They are fluent in code-switching, adapting based on the situation at home, or with friends or at work. They expect brands to do the same. But this requires a different playbook—one that’s a clear departure from legacy models, which are built on an individualistic, monolingual, and predominantly white view of the consumer.
What Telemundo gets right with its campaign offers a lesson for marketers across categories. To win the U.S. market today, brands need to reach more than the individual consumer. They need to reach the family, the community, and the household where the World Cup is being watched together. Not just in English, and not just in Spanish. En ambos idiomas, al mismo tiempo.