Jul 11, 2026
Walmart is giving World Cup tourists the full VIP treatment with guided store tours this month, but it comes with a catch. They won’t be allowed to take home a souvenir drum of ranch dressing, no matter how badly they want one.
Walmart confirmed that policy itself, which tells you how many tourists must have asked.
Advertisement
Lamine Yamal is 18, plays for Spain, and became a different kind of viral this summer after fans spotted him pushing a shopping cart out of a Walmart in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.
Thanks for subscribing!
The money news that actually matters.
By signing up, you accept Moneywise Terms of Use, Subscription Agreement, and Privacy Policy.
And he’s not the only one. Irish tourist Mick Madeiros posted a TikTok comparing Walmart’s family-size Fruity Pebbles bags to sacks of dog food. Englishman Harry Gunns also filmed the chip aisle and called it “absolute insanity in all the best ways.” A group of Australians filmed themselves chanting “We are going to Walmart” on their way inside.
Videos like these have pulled in millions of views and thousands of comments, according to CNN. Walmart, the country’s largest retailer with $579.99 billion in U.S. sales last year, according to the National Retail Federation, noticed. On July 8, it announced two VIP tours built around the exact aisles tourists can’t stop posting about.
What’s inside the VIP tour
The Miami stop follows the July 11 Norway-England quarterfinal, where only the first 20 fans in line for the parking-lot event Walmart is co-hosting with LaLiga, Spain’s soccer league, get in. The New Jersey walkthrough comes later, ahead of the July 19 World Cup final at MetLife Stadium.
Inside the store, the VIP treatment includes a personal guide, a custom-stamped souvenir passport, and what Walmart describes as “curated product samplings.” The itinerary focuses on the exact aisles that keep trending online, showing off cereal bags the size of small pets and mayonnaise jars big enough to outlast a college semester.
Walmart’s corporate Instagram account also has a version of the tour already running. A store associate named Ann was featured showing off the aisle where the jumbo condiments live, with peanut butter, ranch, and jalapeños meant for family reunions.
“You can make a bunch of sandwiches with that!” she said.
Must Read
- The ultra-rich use these 5 real estate strategies to build wealth while they sleep — you can start with just $100
- Here’s the average income of Americans by age in 2026. Are you keeping up or falling behind?
- Insurance companies profit most from drivers who auto-renew without shopping around. Comparing 100+ quotes takes 2 minutes and costs nothing
Join 250,000+ readers and get Moneywise’s best stories and exclusive interviews first — clear insights curated and delivered weekly. Subscribe now.
Why Walmart doesn’t need to pay FIFA for any of this
Getting this kind of spotlight through FIFA’s front door isn’t cheap. Second-tier World Cup 2026 Sponsors, a group that includes Bank of America, McDonald’s and Frito-Lay, according to SportsPro, are paying an estimated $65 million to $95 million each for global rights, per Forbes.
Top-tier FIFA Partners like Coca-Cola and Visa pay even more, into the hundreds of millions, for rights across every FIFA event over four years. By March, FIFA had confirmed all 16 of those global slots were already sold out, according to SportsPro.
None of that applies to Walmart, which isn’t an official World Cup sponsor and isn’t using FIFA’s name or logos — so there’s nothing for FIFA’s lawyers to chase. What it is spending instead is closer to a marketing department’s rounding error: two guided tours, some product samples, printed passports and staff time.
Advertisement
FIFA’s rules are strict enough to rename stadiums for anyone who doesn’t pay up. MetLife Stadium, usually home to the Jets and Giants, is going by “New York/New Jersey Stadium” for the tournament because MetLife never signed on as an official partner.
Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, got hit harder as it’s now renamed “San Francisco Bay Area Stadium,” and its logo had to be physically covered for the tournament. Whoever cut the tarp did it precisely along the outline of the Levi’s mark, so nobody had any doubt what was underneath. Levi’s leaned into the joke instead of fighting it, covering its own store signage the same way at locations in France, Brazil, and Mexico.
Alexander Chernev, a marketing professor at Northwestern University, told CNN that kind of forced restraint can work in a brand’s favor — if people can still recognize a logo even after it’s covered up, the recognition sticks harder than if nothing had been done at all. Paid advertising is losing its punch, he added, because there’s too much competing for attention online.
Ann is still working the peanut butter aisle, and nobody at FIFA has her number.
What Walmart gets that $95 million sponsors don’t
Starting June 11, the Transportation Security Administration ran a series of tongue-in-cheek posts reminding international fans that a full-size bottle of ranch can fly home with them — just in a checked bag, never a carry-on.
That’s the kind of attention money can’t buy, and the federal government was, perhaps, generating it for Walmart’s condiment aisle weeks before the company announced a single tour. Official sponsors paid tens of millions of dollars to get their logos in front of these fans. Walmart waited until the fans started filming its shelves for free, then printed some passports.
It’s a remarkably cheap way to win a marketing war that usually takes a nine-figure check. Walmart is betting that a stamped grocery passport and a walk past a cereal bag the size of a small pet will stick with these international visitors long after they forget who won the matches on the pitch.
You May Also Like
- JP Morgan sees gold hitting $6,000/oz before 2027 — and a Gold IRA lets you hold the physical metal while deferring the tax bill. Get your free guide from Priority Gold
- Dave Ramsey warns nearly 50% of Americans are making 1 big Social Security mistake — here’s what it is and the simple steps to fix it ASAP
- Thanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now become a landlord for as little as $100 — and no, you don't have to deal with tenants or fix freezers. Here's how
- Millionaires under 43 are reshaping investing — just 25% of their portfolios are in stocks. Here’s where their money is going
Godwin Oluponmile is a content specialist, SEO strategist and copywriter with seven years of expertise in finance, Web 3.0, B2B SaaS and technology. His work has been featured in publications such as Entrepreneur, HackerNoon, Blocktelegraph and Benzinga.
