Globant’s Federico Pienovi on enabling the most connected World Cup in history
The CEO MENA & APAC at Globant discusses how artificial intelligence and real-time data are reshaping fan engagement, what rights holders and host cities will measure, the infrastructure required to run a tri-nation tournament
10 June, 2026
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When the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off across 16 cities in the US, Canada and Mexico, it will be the largest tournament the competition has ever staged — and, by most accounts, the most digitally connected sporting event in history. Behind the spectacle sits a layer of technology designed to turn billions of anonymous spectators into recognised, addressable fans, and to weave sport together with travel, hospitality and retail into a single connected economy.
Few people are closer to that effort than Federico Pienovi. As CEO for MENA and APAC at Globant — the technology company that has worked alongside FIFA since before Qatar 2022 — Pienovi has helped build the platforms underpinning the modern fan experience, from the FIFA ID system to FIFA+ and the tournament’s AI-driven content workflows. An Argentine who describes football not as entertainment but as identity, he brings both a builder’s perspective and a lifelong fan’s instinct to the question of where the sport is heading.
In this conversation, Pienovi discusses how artificial intelligence and real-time data are reshaping fan engagement, what rights holders and host cities will measure, the infrastructure required to run a tri-nation tournament, and the lessons the Gulf can draw as it builds its own mega-event ambitions.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is expected to be the most digitally connected tournament in history. How will AI, real-time analytics and fan data fundamentally change the way sports organisations engage with audiences before, during and after major events?
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is, genuinely, a before-and-after moment for sports. And I say that as someone who has followed football his whole life, growing up in Argentina, where the sport isn’t entertainment, it’s identity. But what we’re building for 2026 goes far beyond what even the most passionate fan could have imagined.
At Globant, we’ve been working alongside FIFA since before Qatar 2022. That tournament generated five billion fan engagements globally and 5.95 billion social media interactions, and we saw firsthand how hungry fans were for more than a broadcast. They wanted to be participants.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup represents a watershed moment in how sports organisations connect with their audiences, moving far beyond the traditional broadcast-and-attend model that has defined major events for decades. The architecture we’ve been building is centred on what I would call unified fan identity. Through the FIFA ID system, every supporter becomes addressable, not just as an audience member, but as an individual with preferences, history and context.
Through connected platforms spanning ticketing, mobile applications, commerce and social engagement, sports bodies can now capture the complete arc of a fan’s journey, from the moment anticipation builds before a match through to post-game reactions and ongoing engagement between tournaments. This helps to create unified fan identities that allow organisations to recognise, understand and respond to individual supporters across every touchpoint.
The FIFA ID system represents this approach, establishing a backbone for direct-to-fan strategy that transforms anonymous spectators into identifiable, addressable participants in an ongoing relationship.
What AI changes is not just speed, it’s what becomes possible at scale. Fifteen thousand data points were collected per game in Qatar by FIFA’s Technical Study Group. In 2026, those data streams flow directly into AI systems that personalise every fan’s digital interaction in real time: the content they see on FIFA+, the offers they receive, the navigation through a venue, even the replay angle served to their device.
The result is an experience that feels personal despite operating at a scale of billions. That shift, from mass broadcast to individual relationship, is the defining transformation of this era in sports technology.
Globant has described the World Cup as one of the most measurable fan experiences ever. What are the most valuable data points that rights holders, sponsors and host cities will be tracking, and how can they translate those insights into long-term commercial value?
Qatar 2022 was the most watched World Cup on record, 242.8 million viewers for the Argentina final alone. The MENA region delivered 5.4 billion cumulative views, a record for any single region. And yet the most important number wasn’t viewership. It was a depth of engagement.
Rights holders in 2026 will be tracking engagement duration, return rates and what I call emotional resonance markers, the signals that distinguish a casual viewer from a committed fan. FIFA+ generated 192 million views on match highlights in Qatar, with sign-language accessibility options included. That wasn’t a vanity metric; it was proof that when you remove friction and add personalisation, people don’t just watch more, they connect more.
The pathway from casual observer to dedicated supporter can now be mapped and optimised, with each interaction informing the next. First-party data collected through fan engagement solutions enables organisations to deliver personalised offers and communications that dramatically increase conversion rates and satisfaction.
Brands are increasingly attracted to properties with highly engaged audiences because these fans demonstrate greater openness to sponsor messages and activations. The data that matters most here concerns attention quality, sentiment correlation and purchase behaviour, understanding not just exposure but genuine influence. Connected commerce platforms allow sponsors to track the complete journey from awareness through consideration to transaction, providing return on investment with precision.
Host cities occupy a particularly interesting position in this data ecosystem. Connecting information across venues, hotels, restaurants, retail establishments and public spaces helps cities understand how visiting fans move through their environments, where they spend time and money, and what experiences resonate most strongly. This intelligence translates into long-term commercial value through enhanced destination marketing, infrastructure investment prioritisation and the ability to attract future events based on demonstrated hosting capability.
With matches taking place across 16 cities in three countries, the World Cup is becoming as much a technology and logistics challenge as a sporting event. What innovations in digital infrastructure will be critical to delivering a seamless experience for millions of fans?
The digital infrastructure required to deliver seamless experiences at this scale represents some of the most sophisticated technology deployment in the history of live events. The foundation lies in unified platform architecture that connects previously fragmented systems into a coherent ecosystem. Over the past four years, the work of building FIFA+ and developing tournament applications has created the technical fabric necessary for this evolution, a connected environment designed for continuity, performance and growth rather than isolated functionality. This means a fan’s identity, preferences and history travel with them whether they’re accessing services in Toronto, Mexico City or Miami, whether through a mobile device, in-venue screen or home viewing platform.
Content distribution at global scale presents challenges that require intelligent automation to solve. AI-powered workflows can create, distribute and personalise content across competitions and markets simultaneously, adapting messaging and presentation for cultural contexts and individual preferences without manual intervention at every step. Systems that learn from every interaction, identify emerging patterns and adapt in real time represent a qualitative leap beyond static technology implementations. The goal isn’t simply to survive the complexity of a tri-nation tournament but to emerge from it with enhanced capabilities and deeper fan relationships than existed at the outset.
You have highlighted the convergence of sport, hospitality, tourism and retail. Do you see major sporting events evolving into broader economic platforms, and what lessons can destinations in the Middle East learn from this model?
Let’s go back again to the last World Cup. In Qatar, 257,000 hospitality packages were sold, generating the highest hospitality revenue in World Cup history. Over 600,000 licensed products sold across stadiums. More than 1.4 million international visitors arrived, with Saudi Arabia ranking as the third-largest source of ticket buyers, a number I find genuinely significant given what’s happening in the Kingdom right now.
For millions of travelling supporters, the tournament is as much about where they stay, eat and explore as it is about the matches themselves. Cities, venues and brands that recognise this reality are creating connected experiences that follow fans throughout their journey, from hotel booking through city navigation to post-match gatherings in bars, restaurants and public spaces.
This convergence represents a new model for global events wherein sport serves as the catalyst, but the genuine opportunity lies in connecting the surrounding hospitality, tourism and retail economy around the expectations of contemporary fans. The same data infrastructure that powers in-stadium personalisation can extend to recommend restaurants based on culinary preferences, suggest retail experiences aligned with demonstrated interests, and create seamless transitions between different phases of a visitor’s journey.
For destinations in the Middle East, this model offers instructive lessons as the region continues developing its events portfolio. The key insight is that successful mega-events require thinking beyond the competition itself to design integrated experiences spanning accommodation, dining, entertainment, retail and cultural exploration. The technological capability to connect these disparate elements through unified fan identity and intelligent recommendation systems transforms what might otherwise be fragmented tourist experiences into coherent journeys that maximise both visitor satisfaction and economic impact.
The Gulf’s existing investments in world-class hospitality infrastructure, retail destinations and entertainment venues position the region favourably to execute this integrated approach, provided the underlying data architecture and platform connectivity are prioritised alongside physical development.
The Gulf has invested heavily in sports, entertainment and tourism-led economic diversification. How can regional governments, airlines, hospitality groups and retailers leverage fan engagement technologies to maximise the economic impact of future mega-events?
Regional governments, airlines, hospitality groups and retailers across the Gulf have an extraordinary opportunity to leverage fan engagement technologies in ways that multiply the economic returns from mega-events. The starting point is recognising that every interaction with a visiting fan represents not just an immediate transaction but a data point that informs future engagement and a touchpoint for building lasting relationships.
Airlines can extend their role beyond transportation to become integrated travel platforms, using passenger data to anticipate demand patterns, personalise ancillary offerings and create package experiences that combine flights with accommodation, event access and destination activities. The same unified identity systems that power tournament applications can enable seamless recognition across airline, hotel and venue touchpoints, creating continuity that enhances the premium positioning Gulf carriers have cultivated.
Hospitality groups benefit enormously from understanding guest preferences and behaviours in granular detail. Fan engagement platforms generate insights on everything from dining preferences to entertainment interests, enabling hotels to deliver personalised recommendations that increase on-property spending while building the emotional connection that drives loyalty programme participation and return visits. The intelligence gathered during one event becomes the foundation for marketing future events to known audiences with demonstrated interest.
Retailers, particularly in the Gulf’s extensive mall environments, can activate fan data through targeted promotions, personalised navigation and experiential activations that transform shopping from a peripheral activity into an integrated element of the event experience. The gamification techniques that drive engagement on digital platforms translate naturally to retail environments, where digital loyalty mechanics can incentivise exploration, reward engagement and capture valuable behavioural data.
The overarching principle is that fan engagement technology enables the shift from mass marketing to individual relationships at scale, knowing each visitor, understanding their preferences and creating experiences that feel personal despite operating across millions of participants.
Looking beyond the World Cup, what are the next major trends shaping the future of sports technology, and how close are we to a world where personalised, AI-driven fan experiences become the norm rather than the exception?
We are closer than most observers recognise, though the arrival will feel gradual rather than sudden. The infrastructure is already in place; what’s changing is the quality of the intelligence operating on top of it. The most consequential shift is Agentic AI moving from an application layer to an infrastructure layer, from a tool applied to existing processes to the core engine determining how work gets done. At Globant, we see this in how our AI Pods operate: AI agents executing tasks continuously at scale while human experts provide strategic oversight. The difference between a system that processes and a system that learns is compounding, every interaction makes the next one smarter, and the gap between early adopters and late movers widens geometrically, not arithmetically.
This is exactly what we are doing with FIFA. As the scale and complexity of FIFA’s ecosystem increased, we faced a critical question: how do you scale not just operations, but innovation itself? Our response was to fundamentally change how work gets done. We introduced our unique AI Pods model, where AI-driven workflows perform the work, guided and supervised by Globant experts. The impact was immediate: 20% faster delivery, greater predictability, full visibility, and continuous learning embedded into execution.
FIFA now operates through persistent, AI-powered systems that continuously build, improve, and scale capabilities. From a business perspective, this means more velocity, faster experimentation, continuous evolution, and capabilities that compound over time. We’re not simply doing things faster; we’re doing more, better, and with greater strategic impact.
Read: Globant’s Julio De Salvo on launching the world’s first agentic protocol for tourism
