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Viral clips are the direction sports viewers are headed, Serazio believes.
“Your performance over the entire arc of the game doesn’t matter as long as you have a signature time playing well,” Serrazio said.
“A viral moment has more currency,” he said. “It’s more important than the game.”
The question, however, is whether the World Cup athlete can turn that into a career beyond the white lines of the football field, bringing himself millions of new fans.
“You have an interesting window there,” Cesario said. “No one knows who the Cape Verdean goalkeeper is… and I don’t know if they will know who he is after the World Cup is over.”
“Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar, Mbappe can still do deals after they retire,” he said. Cesario said there are few examples of “big-time athletes who have been able to use that post-graduate work.”
One example of successful use of social media audiences is US rugby player Ilona Maher’s rise to prominence in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Maher also has her own podcast, brand ambassador roles, has modeled for Sports Illustrated, and ended up being a runner-up on the television series Dancing with the Stars. Mahder won the Breakthrough Athlete Award at the 2025 ESPY Awards.
Duffy says there are long-term career opportunities for new social media stars, but it’s difficult to calculate exactly how much money can be made.
Pricing for sponsored posts on social media isn’t as standard as it is for traditional media like television ads, Duffy said. “There are very few safeguards on what reasonable income looks like,” Duffy added.
“These are individuals whose careers are still focused on football. So it’s interesting to think about how they can change the shadowy ecosystem of the digital media economy.”
The cultural currency of these viral World Cup stars is now at an all-time high. What that means for their future may depend on how well they retain new fans after the tournament is over.
