On June 11, Mexico kicked off the 23rd World Cup to over 54 million live broadcast viewers. Millions more track the action natively on their mobile devices — pinning a Live Activities to their home screen, selecting their favorite players to explicitly curate their notification preferences, and relying on in-app message centers to catch video summaries and match highlights.

When global tournaments like the World Cup kick off, seconds matter. A single goal triggers millions of mobile interactions, creating sudden infrastructure demands.

To process these immense traffic spikes and deploy personalized, relevant  campaigns without delivery lag, leading sports and media apps like M6 and OneFootball run on Airship. In fact, more than 50 brands use Airship to power their multi-channel, real-time connections with their fans. Our mobile-first CX platform delivers the mission-critical reliability teams trust when brand reputation, fan engagement, and real-time revenue are on the line.

During global tournaments, a delay of even a few seconds devalues breaking news. Airship provides the mission-critical reliability required to deliver match alerts instantly, protecting your audience numbers and preventing sudden uninstalls.

This year, over 50 Airship news, media, entertainment, sports, and streaming customers drove more than eight billion customer interactions during just the first 17 days of the World Cup, leading to these results.

When mission-critical reliability and speed matter, leading brands turn to Airship.

1. Massive scale execution: The platform routes billions of concurrent notifications during peak event windows without queuing delays or system timeouts.
2. Ultra-low latency maintenance: Delivery speeds remain constant during volatile traffic spikes — preserving real-time delivery — even when regional networks face maximum congestion.

Earning real estate on a fan’s device requires moving past generic message blasts and toward contextually relevant in-app experiences — like a sports media app tailoring its main navigation feed around a user’s zero-party preference for their national team. Here is how leading sports media, streaming, and retail brands deploy Airship to execute high-impact campaigns during the world’s biggest sports tournament:

Leading sports streaming platforms and media apps deploy Live Activities to serve scoreboards directly to the iOS and Android lock screen. Instead of sending repetitive push notifications for every pass or yellow card, these brands establish a single, persistent connection on the user’s phone.

This layout updates live score data, match clocks, and current goal-scorers in real time with minimal battery consumption. To drive conversions further down the funnel, a tap on the lock-screen scoreboard deep-links directly into the app’s live stream. This approach keeps fans updated during working hours, reduces notification clutter, and secures active engagement for the full 90 minutes of the match.

A prominent sports and outdoors retailer launched an in-app interactive sweepstakes built entirely through Airship. Digital teams utilized our truly no-code App Experience Editor to deploy native in-app Scenes without waiting on engineering cycles, giving fans a chance to win tickets to one of the matches.

The app prompted fans with daily trivia cards — such as asking about different players — to enter the draw and submit their daily match picks. This gamified sequence kept fans returning to the app on a daily basis. At the same time, the retailer gathered zero-party preferences on footwear and fan gear, enabling them to later use those insights to distribute personalized product recommendations.

Social-first vertical storytelling has graduated from third-party networks directly into owned mobile applications. To capture attention immediately upon app open, a premier European media network deployed full-screen, interactive in-app Stories to welcome fans as the tournament kicked off.

This layout adopts the familiar, swipeable card interface users interact with daily on social platforms — complete with segment progress indicators at the top of the screen. Instead of displaying static banners, the experience pulls users into rich, full-screen video content and immediately initiates a high-value onboarding flow.

From the very first screen, users are prompted to curate their own tournament experience with a clear call-to-action to follow their favorite players or watch match highlights. By routing users through these interactive stories, the publisher also collects zero-party preference data, setting the stage for highly targeted downstream notification campaigns. Because these experiences are built using Airship’s no-code builder, digital teams can iterate on layout, content, and CTA paths in real time based on live match outcomes.

Product and growth teams cannot afford to rely on engineering tickets to change their mobile experiences. Match schedules change, team lineups evolve, and new trends arise everyday. The V4+ upgrade to our Scenes AI Agent shifts the development paradigm by serving as a comprehensive mobile-first designer.

Built on Gemini Flash 3.5, the agent fundamentally accelerates time-to-market. Teams can generate, iterate, and deploy brand-compliant mobile features across iOS, Android, and web channels in minutes rather than days. We generated this immersive mobile experience below in minutes using the Scenes AI Agent.

This automation leaves your core engineering resources free to focus on critical infrastructure backlog items while marketing maintains complete agility.

Earning a permanent place on a user’s device means moving past rigid, transactional campaigns. Sustainable retention requires building unified, native experiences that respect user preferences and deliver value in the moments that matter. When you put the app at the center of your mobile ecosystem, transient customer attention translates directly into repeatable conversions, deeper brand loyalty, and measurable ROI.

The World Cup proves brands cannot afford to treat mobile as just another channel — it is the remote control of your customers’ daily lives. Handling billions of notifications during a world-class sporting event is a clear test of Airship’s infrastructure. But for our customers, this is only one part of their revenue-driving strategy.