Football is the closest thing the Arab world has to a shared language, and sports marketing in the Middle East works best when brands speak it the way fans do. That means chants, rituals, neighbourhood pitches and club loyalty, shown with affection and detail. Brands that borrow those codes honestly earn a place in the conversation that lasts longer than a sponsorship contract.
At iklipse, a creative and AI production agency working across Egypt, Morocco and the GCC, a lot of our favourite work has been about football. Here is what those films taught us.
The region is about to host football's biggest stage twice.
The calendar explains part of the excitement. Morocco hosted the Africa Cup of Nations between December 2025 and January 2026. In December 2024, FIFA confirmed Morocco as a 2030 World Cup co-host with Spain and Portugal, and Saudi Arabia as the host of the 2034 tournament. Qatar hosted in 2022. Within twelve years, the Arab world will have hosted or co-hosted three World Cups.
For brands, that means a decade in which football is the default topic at the café, at the office and on every phone. The question is how to join in without sounding like a sponsor reading from a contract.
Fans are the story, and the players are the supporting cast.
The films that work best in this region rarely start with a star striker. They start with the people who make a match feel like a match. That was the idea behind Shell x Al Ahly, One Voice United.
The film follows Al Ahly's fans one at a time, each in a corner of their own, all singing the same chant. A tailor irons a pile of red shirts. A hand sketches the club's eagle. A cook spins dough, a driver watches a floodlit pitch through his windscreen, and a crew paints a giant banner on a rooftop. By the end the flags are out of the car windows and the flares are lit. Shell Helix Ultra sits in the corner of every frame, present without shouting. Ghazy, our co-founder and creative director, wrote the script and treatment through &That French Guy, iklipse's creative arm.
Why this structure works for a sponsor.
Every fan sees themselves in one of those corners. The brand gets credit for noticing them, which is worth more than any number of logo flashes. Small rituals, filmed with care, turn a sponsorship into something people want to share.
Club loyalty can carry a brand into every sport.
Al Ahly is more than a football club, and FABMISR used that in its Ramadan 2023 film Ballers in Every Sport. Everyone at the club turns out to be a baller, whatever their sport. A table tennis player heads a football over the table. The water polo team kick one about by the pool. A gymnast flicks one up out of a handstand, and a basketball player heads his own ball like a footballer.
The closing card gives FABMISR's line: partner of Al Ahly's success in every sport. The joke is affectionate, and it lets the bank talk about its full partnership with the club through the sport everyone already loves. Ghazy wrote the treatment. KAIRO was the agency, and Adham Nassef produced the music with Sound Great Studios in Dubai.
Fans already have a language, so give them a song in it.
Every stadium in the region has its chants, its insults for the referee and its rituals. Rexona's Alphabet of Cheering turned that into a football song that runs from A to Z, one cheer for every letter. B is for "blow your whistle, ref", M is for the Mexican wave, R is for a red card. Each line gets a hand drawn fan of its own.
The film started from Ghazy's lyrics. He wrote them, did the creative and built the treatment around them, with FP7 Cairo as the agency and Maged Nassar directing for Good People. The approach respects how fans actually talk and celebrates the chants they already shout.
Morocco shows how global football becomes local.
European club football has a huge following across North Africa, and Moroccan juice brand Abtal used that in Made for Champions, its La Liga campaign. Kids in Real Madrid and Barça shirts keep a ball up on a rooftop. Five a side runs in a cage between the flats. A crowd squeezes round one Abtal carton, and the barbers at Salon Lydia join in. It ends on the beach with the campaign line, N3ichou La Liga Loca, and cartons printed with La Liga players.
The idea, the treatment and the script came from Ghazy and &That French Guy. The film shows a very Moroccan street that happens to love Spanish football, which is exactly how fans there live it.
Good football films need production that can move fast.
Football runs on fixtures, and fixtures do not wait for a production schedule. A derby result, a cup run or a national team moment gives a brand a few days to react. That is where operations matter as much as ideas. Omar El Bakly, our co-founder and operations director, keeps crews, locations and post-production ready to move when the calendar turns.
It is also where AI-infused production helps. We use it for previs, crowd extensions, quick variations for different markets and fast versioning, while the faces and the fans stay real. For bigger activations around tournaments, our brand experiences team builds the live side.
Here are four rules for football marketing in the region.
- Start with fans. Rituals, chants and neighbourhoods carry more emotion than a player's face.
- Be specific about the club. Al Ahly fans are not interchangeable with anyone else's. Get the colours, the songs and the jokes right.
- Keep the brand present and polite. A product in the corner of the frame can be enough.
- Plan for the calendar. Tournaments, derbies and Ramadan fixtures are the moments that matter.
Frequently asked questions about sports marketing in the Middle East.
Which World Cups will the Arab world host?
Qatar hosted in 2022. Morocco co-hosts 2030 with Spain and Portugal, and Saudi Arabia hosts 2034, as confirmed by FIFA in December 2024.
Does a brand need an official sponsorship to talk about football?
Official partnerships give access to club names and logos. Without one, brands can still celebrate fan culture, as long as they respect the rights holders' rules.
What makes a football ad work in Egypt or Morocco?
Local detail. Real neighbourhoods, real chants and real rituals, filmed with affection, do more than generic stadium shots.
Sources: FIFA, Morocco World News, ABC News (Associated Press).
