This summer, the world’s biggest football tournament is coming to North America, and will be discussed in real time by billions of people across our platforms. We’re partnering with creators, athletes, and teams to highlight the conversation and culture around every match — from pre-game hype to post-game debate.
Partnering With Creators, Athletes, and Teams
We’re working with broadcasters, national teams, commentators, creators, and players to bring unique points of view on the tournament to our apps. Key moments, behind-the-scenes content, pre-game preparations, post-game analyses, celebrations, and commiserations will live on Meta apps designed for sharing and discussing with your friends, family, and fellow fans.
New Features for Fans Across Meta’s Family of Apps
Threads
Threads is built for real-time conversation around the things people care about. When something wild happens on the field, fans know they can go to Threads for hot takes, banter, and real-time reactions. This summer, we’re building on that experience with new features and a dedicated community designed for the way fans actually watch the tournament.
- Live Chats: Pull up to real-time conversations hosted by football commentators, athletes, and creators before, during, and after matches. React, reply, and talk straight to the hosts as it all unfolds.
- Sergio Aguero, the Argentina football legend and Ian Wright, the former England striker and current TV and radio pundit, will each host three Live Chats over the course of the tournament. Follow both on Threads to get notified when their Live Chats begin.
- Check for an updated schedule and more hosts announced on @threads throughout the tournament.
- Football Community: A special community for this summer’s tournament on Threads is the one place for it all: match-day conversation, player content, and post-game debate.
- Live Scores: We’re giving you real-time match scores with national team branding, appearing inline as you post and in Live Chats so you can follow along while you chat.
- Team Flair: You can now choose a flag badge to appear next to your name and profile picture, so you can rep your country all tournament.
- Stickers: We’re introducing packs that show up in the composer the second you start posting about a match. Say it with more than words.
- Custom Emoji: You’ll now have football and trophy reactions for tournament posts. ⚽🏆
- Media Highlights: We’re aggregating top content from broadcasters for you to read and react to.
- Never Miss a Moment: We’ll be spotlighting important conversation in Search, and adding Game Reminders that ping you for kickoffs and the moments you can’t miss.
We’re making Instagram the go-to place for all things tournament-related.
- Enhanced Search: We’re introducing a brand new, enhanced search experience, so when you search for the tournament or tap the tournament button on football videos globally, you’ll land on a dedicated destination that surfaces curated, real-time content from across Instagram. You’ll see top Reels, Stories, and featured accounts from official rights-holding broadcasters and national teams, alongside the best fan content.
- AI-Powered Voice Effects: To make connecting with friends over the matches more fun, we’re globally rolling out a new ‘Goal!’ voice effect powered by AI in Instagram DMs. Send one to unlock a surprise animation.
Facebook is going full football mode with a range of new features that bring match-day energy to every interaction.
- Football Mode: Double-tap the Facebook logo at the top of Feed to activate football mode across the app and celebrate the tournament with themed reactions and other surprises. Plus, gain access to a special football game and custom app icon by long-pressing on the logo.
- Wear It: Sport your favorite national team’s jersey with the new Wear It feature, which lets fans use AI to virtually try on jerseys and show their support by sharing the image as a profile picture, story, or post. To get started open Stories, select a photo, tap AI Edit, and choose Wear It. Then pick your team’s jersey and share!
- Express Yourself: Find exclusive tournament-themed stickers, football-inspired design edits, and brand new expressive tools throughout Facebook to fuel your fandom.
Whether you’re celebrating a late-in-the-game goal or commiserating over a heartbreaking loss, Facebook gives fans new ways to wear their pride and share the moment.
Messenger
Messenger is launching new features to bring the tournament hype directly into your group chat.
- Live Updates: This new feature brings real-time match highlights directly into your Messenger group chat. When Live Updates is activated, your thread instantly goes from delayed reactions to real-time celebrations — no refreshing, no spoilers, just you and your friends reacting together as goals, red cards, and key match moments appear in your chat while the action unfolds on the pitch. To turn Live Updates on, just tap the plus sign in the bottom left navigation bar of your group chat and pick a game to get updates about.
- Chat Theme: Add an extra kick of football to your group chat by activating a limited-edition chat theme. Just long-press on the background of any group chat to change your background to a football pitch.
- Stickers: When words aren’t enough to capture your fandom, express yourself with our exclusive tournament-themed animated stickers.
The only thing that matches the energy on the pitch is your group chat. WhatsApp has rolled out features to make following the tournament with the people you care about even more fun.
- Trionda Upgrade: We partnered with Adidas to bring the official match ball for this summer’s tournament to WhatsApp. Now through the finals, the football emoji has been upgraded to the Trionda ball. Send it as a message or drop it as a reaction.
- Calling Effects: We’ve also introduced new football calling effects, so you can bring the fun and fandom to your next group video call — filters you can add onto your face or background while you’re on a live video call.
- Football Sticker Packs: And for when you need just the right sticker to express how you feel after that missed penalty or questionable red card, we’ve rolled out a football-themed sticker pack to better express how you’re really feeling about a game.
- A Dedicated Football Directory: During the tournament, you can expect match-day countdowns, behind-the-scenes moments, and real-time highlights from channels across WhatsApp. We’ve created a dedicated football directory to bring together your favorite teams, latest scores, and updates all in one place for easy access.
- Say it With a Status: We’re also rolling out the ability for Channels to post to Status, just in time for the tournament. You’ll see statuses from channels you follow alongside other statuses, and can also view a channel’s status when you visit a Channel. You can hide any channel’s statuses so it no longer appears alongside your statuses, or unfollow the channel at any time.
Protecting Athletes and Fans Online
Football fans across the globe will use our apps to connect around the tournament. While most will be rooting for their favorite teams and players, unfortunately there may be bad actors who will try to lure people into scams or harass and abuse others — offline and online. We recently shared more details about the steps we’re taking to combat scams and our approach to keeping fans and players safe from abuse, including new in-app reminders for people searching for tickets — and updating existing ones to help people stay safe on our apps.
“We’re about to witness the biggest cultural moment of all time, and Meta will be at the very centre of showcasing the tournament’s action and surrounding culture beyond the 90 minutes on the pitch. As the place where football conversation lives and grows, Meta’s suite of apps will allow billions of fans across the globe to connect and enjoy the highs and lows of the beautiful game together.”
— Rob Pilgrim, Global Football Lead, Meta
We’re excited to help fans immerse themselves in football culture this summer through our family of apps.
