Every four years, the World Cup stops the planet. Stadiums fill. Streets empty. And for a few weeks, football becomes the world's shared language. But when the final whistle blows and the last fan heads home, what actually stays?  

In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), we tend to measure the legacy of sporting mega-events in terms of infrastructure and tourism. Yet the World Cup also energizes a broader ecosystem of businesses built around content, media, intellectual property, and consumer experiences. Together, they form a creative economy that is increasingly viewed as an investable asset class with significant growth potential.  

Sports are part of the cultural and creative industries that drive demand for branding, licensing, merchandising, music, film, fashion, digital content, and large-scale audience engagement. Creative industries already generate $124 billion annually – 2.2% of regional GDP and 1.9 million jobs. For IDB Invest, the opportunity lies in helping more of these businesses access the capital needed to grow, export, and expand across markets.

Sportainment: The Industry Behind the Industry  

There's a term gaining traction in boardrooms from São Paulo to Mexico City: sportainment. It describes the convergence of sports with entertainment, media, technology, and culture; an ecosystem where the match is just beginning.  

Audiences, creators, brands, broadcasters, and platforms all participate in a value chain that starts long before the players step onto the field. Globally, the sports market – media rights, sponsorships, match-day revenues, and licensing – is projected to reach $600 billion by 2030, with broader estimates including sports tourism, technology, and associated services reaching approximately $1.8 trillion annually.  

Latin America and the Caribbean Has the Assets but Lacks the Architecture  

The region's sports talent is globally recognized. Its cultural output – music, visual arts, storytelling – is world-class. Its fan base is passionate and digitally engaged. These strengths position LAC to capture a greater share of the value generated by sports-related content, media, and intellectual property (IP).

Yet LAC accounts for only around 1% of global creative exports. The region continues to face familiar challenges, including fragmented policy frameworks, limited access to financing for intangible assets, weak data infrastructure, and a creative workforce in which 24% of workers are informal.    

IDB Group has spent more than a decade building the playbook to address those challenges. More than 126 operations supporting cultural and creative industries components across 24 countries – totaling over $2.5 billion – have demonstrated what works: digital skills development, export promotion platforms, creative cluster finance, and public-private partnerships that connect talent to markets.

Where Private Investment Comes In  

IDB Invest sees the sports-creative economy as a compelling investment thesis across a diverse portfolio of bankable assets.

Sports infrastructure, digital content platforms, sports technology companies, audiovisual production hubs, and creative licensing businesses all represent investment opportunities. Multilateral development banks are increasingly converging around this view, and IDB Invest is positioned to lead that agenda in LAC.  

Consider the kinds of deals that connect sports to the broader creative economy: an animation studio producing sports content for streaming platforms; a sports-tech firm developing performance analytics tools; a music company building an official soundtrack ecosystem for a league; a fintech platform enabling creative freelancers in sports media to access working capital. These are already happening across the region, often without the structured investment vehicles to scale them.  

After the World Cup: What Comes Next?  

Mega-events like the World Cup create a rare window. They compress attention and investment. Infrastructure gets built, brands activate at scale, and creative sectors experience a surge in demand and visibility. The risk is that the window closes and the legacy fades.  

And for LAC, that opportunity has never been more concrete. Mexico co-hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2026. Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay will open the 2030 edition. For the first time in history, the region hosts back-to-back World Cups – a compressed, once-in-a-generation window to build something that outlasts the tournament. Countries that have used major sporting events strategically have emerged with stronger creative ecosystems, not just renovated stadiums. The United Kingdom after the 2012 Olympics is one example. LAC now has that same chance, twice over.  

When the World Cup trophy is lifted and billions are watching, the real measure of success for LAC lies in how many creative businesses are financed, how many digital jobs are created, and how many homegrown IP assets are built and exported.  

That is the legacy of a thriving sports-creative ecosystem, one that continues to generate value through content, jobs, exports, and cultural identity long after the final whistle blows.