Dai Dai Divides Fans

Executive summary

Shakira and Burna Boy's "Dai Dai" — the official 2026 FIFA World Cup anthem — exploded onto global platforms with 26 million views in three days, yet nearly half of survey respondents say they're simply not interested in World Cup music. That gap tells a story about who follows a tournament and who celebrates it, and it matters right now as the largest sporting event in history prepares to kick off across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

Among 130 respondents surveyed days after the May 23 video premiere, 44.6% selected "Not interested in World Cup music" — the single largest response category. But 39.2% expressed genuine excitement at seeing Shakira, Burna Boy, Messi, and Mbappé together, and nearly 1 in 4 respondents (24.8%) named cultural events and music as their primary World Cup draw. The anthem appears to be working — just not uniformly.

Key takeaways: the song's multi-genre Afro Pop and Latin Pop fusion directly matches what respondents say makes a great anthem (unity, not hype); Messi speaking English for the first time publicly became the dominant viral moment even though few survey respondents flagged it; and emotionally sensitive fans — those scoring higher on neuroticism — are the collaboration's natural amplifiers.

Context

On May 23, 2026, Shakira and Nigerian Grammy-winner Burna Boy released the official music video for "Dai Dai," FIFA's chosen anthem for the 2026 World Cup — a 48-team tournament spanning 104 matches across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The video features Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland, Harry Kane, Vinícius Jr., and roughly a dozen other global football stars. It is the most star-studded football-themed music video ever assembled.

The backdrop matters. FIFA had already released one 2026 anthem: "Lighter," a country-rock collaboration by Jelly Roll and Carín León that was widely panned by fans and critics for lacking the rhythmic energy and global unity messaging that audiences associate with World Cup music. Academic analysis described it as a "Bible Belt track without a pulse." "Dai Dai" arrived as an implicit course-correction — a track that blends Afro Pop and Latin Pop, shouts out all 48 participating nations by name, and leans into the cross-continental collaboration formula that made Shakira's 2010 anthem "Waka Waka" reach 700 million viewers in 215 countries.

This pulse survey captured 130 responses in the immediate aftermath of the video premiere, asking fans what they thought of the collaboration, what makes a great World Cup anthem, and how much celebrity star power actually moves the needle on their interest. The sample skews toward less-engaged followers — a notable 34.9% said "none of these" when asked what they look forward to about the 2026 World Cup — which makes the 39.2% who expressed genuine excitement at the collaboration all the more meaningful as a signal.

The stakes are unprecedented in scale. Bank of America projects 6.5 million in-person attendees across all 104 matches, and the World Cup final alone could draw 1.5 billion viewers worldwide — numbers that make even a disengaged survey sample relevant, because the anthem will reach passive audiences whether they seek it out or not.

Conclusion

"Dai Dai" has cleared the first hurdle: it went viral where it needed to, and it is structurally built around the unity-first formula that both respondents and history say works. The more difficult challenge is converting the 44.6% who say they're not interested in World Cup music — a group that will nevertheless be exposed to the anthem billions of times across the summer.

Watch for two signals in the weeks ahead. First, whether streaming numbers sustain — "Waka Waka" reached its full cultural weight through months of tournament play, not just launch week. Second, whether Messi's English cameo has legs as a social media moment; the survey sample largely missed it, but platform metrics suggest the broader public didn't.

For marketers and FIFA's activation partners, the psychographic split is the actionable takeaway: emotionally resonant, celebrity-forward creative works on the engaged, emotionally reactive fan. Pragmatic, resilient fans respond to a different frame entirely — the game, the stakes, the competition. An anthem campaign sophisticated enough to run both in parallel may be what it takes to reach a 1.5-billion-viewer audience that spans both.