How Advertising Led to the USWNT's Demise in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup
Image Courtesy: FOX Soccer
The much-anticipated four-year wait for the FIFA Women’s World Cup had ended. The summer of 2023 had finally arrived, and with it came the pre-tournament promotional advertisements. Many brands, such as Nike, Visa, Coke, and Adidas, created advertisements that showcased different teams and players.
As expected, the United States Women’s National Soccer Team was present in a lot of the ads since they were the reigning champions, holding back-to-back World Cup titles from 2015 and 2019. The seemingly unstoppable team was aiming to make history by being the first team to “three-peat”, or win three consecutive World Cups. As you can imagine, being such a successful team comes with immense pressure and expectations. With all eyes on the TV, companies were looking to reap the benefits of their ad placements by capitalizing on such achievements. The USWNT quite literally had the weight of the world on their shoulders.
Controversy Before the Tournament
One commercial in particular caused an uproar online. FOX Soccer released “USA vs. The World,” an imaginative take on what the rest of the world was doing to prepare for facing the world champions. The commercial features people from different nations devising far-fetched plans to stop the Americans, such as canceling their flights, attempting to steal their plays by spying through drones, augmented reality simulation training, and time traveling.
Every plan failed as the U.S. team outsmarted them, even ending the commercial with star player Alex Morgan saying “good luck with that.” The team received a lot of backlash when this commercial began airing in June, often being referred to as arrogant and complacent. Within the YouTube comment section of the video, there were comments such as “Most disrespectful and embarrassing thing I’ve watched,” “I hope they get their butts kicked,” “Obnoxious and arrogant, hope they get knocked out.”
Although others had negative opinions in response to this commercial advertisement, I believed that the USWNT was allowed to talk smack and display a front of confidence in themselves after having been so successful for so many years. In my opinion, their smug optimism was warranted. Yes, I might be biased, but not a lot of teams can say that they’ve won two consecutive World Cups. In fact, no other team can say they’ve won four in total. That’s pretty impressive if you ask me, and another reason why advertisers desire to benefit from teams like this that have been known to triumph.
Effects of the Ad
Flash forward to August 6, the USWNT played Sweden in the Round of 16. After the score remained 0-0 throughout the game and overtime, the USWNT lost 5-4 in an intense penalty shootout. This loss marked the USWNT’s earliest exit ever from the World Cup since they had never failed to make it to the semi-finals or finish worse than third place. In a way, they did make history, but not in the way we had hoped, and not in the way the commercial suggested.
As expected, the commercial resurfaced after the devastating loss to Sweden and people took part in roasting and ridiculing the USWNT online for it, saying the video “aged like milk.” It seemed as if people were waiting for this moment to come so they could mock the U.S. team for their prior self-confidence. One person wrote, “Well isn’t this hilarious now?” Another person wrote, “Those USWNT World Cup ads are so cringe now.” Someone else wrote, “Overhyped, underperformed.”
What everyone needs to understand is that even champions lose sometimes too. Winning and losing is a part of life, and nobody goes undefeated indefinitely, no matter how much we wish that they can. However, this commercial put an immense strain on this team in an already stressful environment, which caused them to choke. It set such high expectations, so much so, that it affected their gameplay and led to their World Cup demise.
Do I think this is the end of the USWNT’s dominance? No, I don’t. I believe they’ll come back stronger from this defeat, and that this loss will only fuel them to get back on top. They had a huge target on their back stemming from the pressures of the commercial, and the players themselves knew that all of the other teams were looking to take them down. As a soccer-lover and advertiser myself, I can’t wait to watch their performance in the next World Cup, along with all of the pre-tournament advertisements. The summer of 2027 can’t come soon enough!
Alexis Rodriguez