Web-only merchant Soccer.com grew sales significantly in recent months, improving upon year-ago results leading up to, during and after the 2026 World Cup.

From March 1 until the World Cup’s Group Stage began in the second week of June, Soccer.com saw a 40% year-over-year increase in revenue, according to Billy Lalor, director of consumer merchandising. That was along the lines of what the online retailer had planned going into the event. He told Digital Commerce 360 that the “large majority” of that change was from the fan gear space. That includes products such as national team jerseys, which he said early adopters get “fired up about.”

Other categories saw increases as well, at rates in the 10% range, he said. But some products in the fan space saw growth in the “strong triple digits,” around 300% year over year.

Lalor based the metric on a period starting on March 1, because that was the month when most of the on-field product — such as the jerseys that teams wore — launched. 

“And it’s settling down,” Lalor said. “It’s tailing off into sort of a more normal annual traffic and revenue pattern, but with a continued lift from people still being excited, which is what we’ve seen in past World Cups as well.”

How the World Cup impacted Soccer.com sales

Then the World Cup began, and Soccer.com saw fan space product growth of more than 900% year over year.

And Soccer.com overall saw its business grow 260% year over year during the World Cup. The tournament concluded July 19.

Since the event through mid-August, Soccer.com’s business grew 30% year over year. A big part of that has been fans celebrating Spain’s win, Lalor said.

“Coming out of the event, you’ve got a lot of fans coming in,” Lalor said. “Some of them are still buying teams other than Spain, but Spain winners jerseys drove a big number. And while we had great sell-through, there’s still, of course, always going to be stuff that you have to move through afterwards.”

He described such tournament events as “absolutely massive.” And although the World Cup is the largest, the European Championships and Copa America also produce meaningful spikes in traffic and sales for Soccer.com.

Because both of those events overlap in the second year between World Cups, they have the effect of “a mini World Cup.” Normally the combined effect of the European Championships and Copa America is about 30% to 40% of the demand in traffic that the World Cup generates for Soccer.com, Lalor said.

The online retailer is only now getting over the bell curve of the World Cup-induced peak, Lalor said. There are also seasonal peaks when soccer players are getting ready to play for their school or club teams. The third peak, Lalor said, is holiday shopping.

How Soccer.com prepares for peak traffic

“It’s very data-driven, of course,” Lalor explained. “Our merchants do have to make judgments about what products are coming to market versus the attractiveness of the comparable products in seasons past. We don’t just take the data from seasons past and plug it in, but we do start with it. And we have a lot of data.”

Soccer.com looks at recent trends, not just a three-year average on particular product groups or time of year, he added. It plans farther out than six or seven months.

Trends help Soccer.com make forecasting adjustments, though. It buys and adjusts its buying accordingly to try to have the right amount of what its consumers want at the time they want it.

A key factor is the cycle of product innovation. He gave the example that footwear at major brands such as Adidas and Nike typically update their product life cycles every 18 months or two years. That’s when they tend to drive newness and innovation within a product silo, according to Lalor.

“That’s always a big consideration versus every quarter or 12 months, they’re going to give some slight changes to the product, cosmetic changes to sort of freshen up the attention to it,” he said.

And they don’t update simultaneously — another point of consideration. And as long as the execution is good, he said, that causes another spike in interest and sales “in a way that is outside of sort of normal cycles of growth.”

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