A World Cup campaign comment section is a different beast to most. The audience is global, passionate, and deeply opinionated - but not just about the football.

Which players should have been included? Which brands deserve to be there? Which campaigns feel genuine and which ones feel like a media buy dressed up as cultural relevance? As audiences get more savvy, comment sections are getting more and more complex.

Reach numbers during a tournament like this are almost meaningless as a signal of how a campaign landed, as everything gets inflated by the sheer volume of people watching. The comments, however, are where you can see how individuals actually reacted.

Which is why we picked three of the biggest campaigns of the 2026 tournament and ran them through Siftsy to see what audiences were really saying.

Here’s what we found.

McDonald’s World Cup Meal campaign featured some of the most iconic names in football. Beckham, Ronaldinho, Yamal, Henry, Son - it’s a lineup that would stop most football fans in their tracks. Unsurprisingly, the reach was enormous, and the campaign generated significant comment volume across its posts.

However, the conversation had little to do with the star lineup.

Instead, the comment section was consumed by requests for a Tim Payne collectible cup, calls to bring back the Grimace Shake, and a recurring debate about whether The Amazing Digital Circus belongs in a Happy Meal (yes, really).

So audiences engaged - just not with what the campaign was actually about, or what McDonald’s had spent hefty budget putting in front of them.

Nike’s Rip the Script was the biggest World Cup campaign in terms of raw engagement, racking up 299 million views and 78,000 comments across its posts. Cross-cultural casting across football legends like Ronaldo and Mbappé, as well as celebrities like Channing Tatum, Kim Kardashian and Lisa from BLACKPINK, gave multiple communities a reason to engage, and the numbers reflected that.

But the comment section told a more complicated story. Sentiment came in at 5.5 - the lowest of the three campaigns - with audiences divided on athlete inclusion choices and Nike’s perceived role in national team decisions.

A recurring thread centered on Brazilian player Endrick’s exclusion from the national squad, with commenters directly threatening to switch to competitor brands if the situation didn’t change.

So while Nike generated the most engagement, it also generated the most divided comment section.

When FIFA’s sponsorship rules forced Levi’s to cover its own logo at Levi’s Stadium, they spotted an opportunity - updating their social profiles to match the redacted branding and leaning into the absurdity of being censored at their own stadium.

And the comment section rewarded them for it. Audiences called it a genius tactic, immediately asked for a limited-edition [redacted] tee, and framed FIFA’s rule as a gift of free publicity. Sentiment hit 7.5 and consensus hit 7.6 - the highest of the three brands.

Levi’s then followed up by actually releasing the [redacted] tee, turning a comment section full of demand into a product and brand moment.

The most perfectly planned campaigns don’t always generate the most positive comment sections.

McDonald’s assembled a legendary football lineup and their audience was more interested in collectible cups. Nike ran the most viewed campaign of the tournament and ended up with its most divided reception. While Levi’s turned a restriction into a reactive campaign and walked away with the highest sentiment score of the three.

Engagement might tell you how many people showed up, but the comment sections tells you why - and whether any of it actually built something for your brand.

Those are two very different questions, and the gap between the answers is where the most useful insight tends to live.

Have brands lost the plot in comment sections?

That’s the question Matthew Stasoff posed in a guest essay for Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio. His argument: the outbound commenting era has run its course, and the comment section - once a genuinely interesting place for brands to show up - now feels like a high school party the parents keep crashing.

P.S. If you’re wondering how to do outbound commenting the right way, you might want to tune in for next week’s newsletter (*wink* *wink*).

What the Siftsy team has been reading, saving, and talking about this week.