Playing with Cannes
What did sport look like on a hot summer's day in the small town you grew up in? Maybe you were the neighbourhood champ when it came to Kick the Can? Perhaps you learned to play football, kicking an empty tuna tin around, or honed your pitching accuracy with a pyramid of washed-out soup cans.
As kids, we did more than just play sports for fun. We invented sports that didn't exist. Crafted equipment from old household items and new trash. Gerrymandered rules and playing surfaces to ensure our victory. Built an entire season out of necessity, boredom and friendship.
Imagine one day all those inventive young players would be walking La Croisette at the Cannes Lions Festival, where the sessions covering sport, sponsorship, and events filled the Palais, Stagwell Sport Beach, FQ Beach by Female Quotient, and the Axios Yacht. Imagine one day those masters of aluminum would be listening to the likes of Susie Wolff and Lando Norris, who know a thing or two about this important alloy? Imagine one day those innovators would be developing new professional sports leagues to chase the next billion fans?
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has definitely decided to build a new trophy rack for the sporting life. If the 2025 unofficial theme of Cannes was that Sport could be the antidote to AI, then 2026 was all about how Sport is thriving as a vehicle for culture. Given that the World Cup was being played at the same time, it underscored what the world was witnessing: sport, culture, natural ride, and entertainment being served on a golden platter from North America.
However, it was a campaign from Peru that earned the shiniest trophy, as Cannes awarded McCann Lima the Sport Grand Prize for the Entertainment Lions for the Thousand Sponsors of Muni - Club Deportivo Municipal.
When the club lost its main jersey sponsor, McCann developed a strategy to have the club redesign their kit to provide space for 1,000 small businesses to contribute. In the end, they raised enough money to keep the team afloat and, more powerfully, equipped the community to promote the club to their customers and employees.
At the other end of the sports spectrum from this beloved soccer club is the behemoth that is F1. What's amazing to me is the long-term impact of the Netflix Drive to Survive series, with seemingly never-ending success in advancing the FIA's business. Eight seasons of the series have transformed it from a one-hit wonder into a cultural connector with the unparalleled horsepower to fuel F1 fandom. It's also intriguing to hear so many F1 leaders, on the stages at Cannes, from drivers to marketers to team principals, crediting the series for its impact.
Sports investment, whether in tech, youth sports, emerging leagues, or venues, has attracted over $100 billion in PE and VC investment in the past five years, according to RedBird Capital Partners. The return on these investments will be determined by the ability to capture sponsorship revenue, media rights values, ticket sales, licensing, and social media monetization. In short, these investments will need fandom and followings. That was the script for dozens of innovators on stages at Cannes. These voices ranged from leaders reimagining how women's football clubs are operated in Europe to a single company aggressively and relentlessly vertically integrating pickleball to entrepreneurs partnering with the NFL, leveraging LA28 to launch a professional flag football league. They are a new breed of entrepreneurs trying to satisfy the global appetite among sports fans for more fun, excitement and a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves.
The 2026 Cannes Festival also featured the launch of a new two-day "Lions Sports" summit as a high-profile component of the overall event. This conference, within the overall festival, was a significant historical step for the Festival to build a new trophy case for brands and stakeholders who are leaning in with their budgets and resources.
Now that sports marketing has its own dedicated stage at Cannes, I am intrigued to see what innovations it will showcase that may remind you of the games you invented and played as a child.
Mark Harrison