By Federico Pienvoi, CEO for MENA and APAC at Globant

With the 2026 FIFA World Cup in full swing across 16 cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the tournament has marked a shift in how we experience sport, and how sport experiences us. With 48 nations competing for the first time and millions of fans flooding stadiums from Vancouver to Guadalajara, it is the most connected, most measured, most analyzed cultural event in history. Every cheer, every purchase, every swipe through a stadium app generates data points that paint an unprecedented portrait of fandom itself.

The pitch remains the same 100-meter rectangle it’s always been. Everything else? Unrecognizable. Step inside any of the tournament’s venues and you’ll encounter two stadiums occupying the same physical space. The first is the one your eyes see: 80,000 seats, manicured grass, the roar of nations colliding. The second is an invisible architecture of apps, sensors, and platforms capturing how you move, what you watch, where you linger, and what makes you reach for your wallet.

The Intelligence Layer

Since 2022, FIFA and Globant have worked side by side to transform a fragmented landscape of platforms into a connected ecosystem designed for continuity, performance, growth, and continuous innovation. Key initiatives included building the foundations of FIFA+, enabling unified fan identity through FIFA ID as the backbone of a direct-to-fan strategy, developing the Tournament App as the gateway to live event participation, and scaling global content distribution across competitions.

As the scale and complexity of FIFA’s ecosystem increased, Globant introduced AI Pods, persistent execution units where AI-driven workflows perform the work, guided and supervised by Globant experts, delivering a 20% improvement in efficiency and delivery speed, greater predictability across execution cycles, and full traceability across workflows and decisions. This model enables FIFA to move from fragmented fan interactions to a unified, direct communication channel where every fan becomes identifiable, reachable, and monetizable over time, turning fan engagement into a continuous, data-driven relationship that drives long-term growth.

For leagues, teams, and sponsors, this represents the ability to activate fan data in ways that feel valuable, turning anonymous spectators into known customers with preferences you can actually serve. In our work with LALIGA, Globant’s teams manage 900 terabytes of data across more than 400 digital assets reaching 260 million fans, a scale of operation that would be operationally and financially unfeasible without AI-augmented delivery.

Here’s where things get genuinely interesting: the same platforms transforming how fans experience matches are now reshaping how the matches themselves are played.

Ahead of the World Cup, Mauricio Pochettino, the Argentine tactician charged with resurrecting American soccer on the world stage, selected Globant’s Sportian Performance platform to support the US Men’s National Team’s tactical preparation. The platform brings match data, video, and AI-powered insight into a single workspace, giving coaching staff live, in-match intelligence rather than after-the-fact analysis.

Pochettino isn’t an early adopter taking a flyer on unproven technology. The same coaching intelligence platform is already trusted by all 42 professional clubs of LALIGA and the Belgian Pro League. When one of the most respected coaches in world football builds his in-tournament strategy around your data platform, that tells you where competitive advantage in sport is heading.

From Saudi Arabia to the World: Building Without Legacy

To understand where sports technology is heading, look to Saudi Arabia, which is hosting the AFC Asian Cup 2027 and the FIFA World Cup 2034. The Kingdom is going through a generational infrastructure build-out that offers a preview of what’s possible when you design systems from scratch rather than retrofit them onto creaking legacy architectures. Saudi Arabia’s AI market is projected to reach $16.90 billion by 2032, growing at a 34.3% compound annual growth rate, driven by Vision 2030 and sustained government investment in digital transformation.

The Saudi Pro League serves as a laboratory for what elite competition management looks like when AI is applied properly: intelligent fixture scheduling that balances hundreds of sporting and operational constraints, operational forecasting for stadiums and security, and AI-generated reporting that frees competition staff to focus on strategy rather than paperwork.

Traditional sports technology projects often require large teams, extended timelines, and unpredictable outcomes. Globant has developed a unique delivery model to address this challenge through its AI Pods, subscription-based, AI-native teams where supervised, agent-orchestrated workflows take on work that used to require large traditional project teams. These pods are delivering results up to seven times faster than conventional approaches, drawing on access to more than 140 large language models depending on the use case. Within FIFA partnerships, AI Pods delivered work 20% faster with greater predictability and full visibility into execution. The gains compound: agents execute, experts supervise, and clients receive governed outputs at scale.

So what does any of this mean for someone with tickets to a match?

It means the app on your phone will know when you arrive, guide you to your seat, surface the video highlights you actually want to see, and remember that you prefer your beer cold and your merchandise in medium. It means the sponsors surrounding you, on screens, on surfaces, in the augmented overlays you might see through your phone’s camera, will have paid for access to an audience they can actually measure.

It means the coaching staff of both teams on that pitch will have prepared using AI-powered analysis. And it means the data generated by your presence, your attention and your engagement will feed into systems that make the next tournament, and the one after that, marginally better at understanding what you want.

The 2026 World Cup is a spectacle of athletic excellence. It is also a global test of whether technology can genuinely improve how we experience the things we love. Millions of fans. Billions of data points. This World Cup, we are finding out what connected fandom really means.

Bait Maryam has opened its doors at City Centre Mirdif, bringing its home-style Levantine cooking and warm hospitality to one of Dubai’s most loved family destinations. The award-winning Palestinian restaurant, founded by chef Salam Daqqaq in 2017, now welcomes guests in the heart of eastern Dubai.

Bait Maryam was built on a simple belief. Food is a form of hospitality, and every guest deserves to feel at home. That belief has guided the restaurant from its first dining room in Jumeirah Lakes Towers to its table in Sharjah, and now to Mirdif. The recipes remain the ones chef Salam learned in her mother’s kitchen, prepared with the same care and served with the same warmth. What began as one woman’s tribute to her mother has grown into a home that thousands now share.

Step inside and the room feels familiar. Soft tones, natural textures, and hand-painted crockery echo the warmth of a Levantine home. Service follows the same rhythm, unhurried and generous, the way a good host makes time for every guest. The design carries the same intention as the food, to make people feel they belong.

City Centre Mirdif welcomes millions of families each year, many from the communities who hold Levantine food close to home. Bait Maryam feels at home among them. The new location offers the same generous table, the same familiar flavours, and the same welcome that guests have come to know. For a neighbourhood built around family, it is a natural fit.

The menu carries the heart of the Levant. Guests can begin with hummus and fresh bread, then move to the signature fatet Maryam musakhan, chicken with sumac and onions over yoghurt, finished with fried bread the way chef Salam’s mother once made it. Slow-cooked lamb mansaf, crispy cauliflower with tahina, and kabab Hamoudi bring the table together, with knafeh and ashta to finish. Every plate is made for sharing, in the spirit of a family gathering, where the table stays full and the conversation stays long.

Bait Maryam’s approach has earned it lasting recognition, including a Michelin Bib Gourmand held for three consecutive years and a place among the region’s most respected kitchens. The awards affirm the work, and the measure that matters most stays the same. For chef Salam, the greatest reward remains a full table and a happy guest.

“Bait Maryam has always been about welcoming people the way we welcome family. My mother taught me that a full table is a form of love, and that lesson has shaped everything I cook. Opening in Mirdif means a great deal to me. This is a neighbourhood full of families who carry these flavours in their memories, and I want them to walk in and feel at home from the very first moment” said Salam Daqqaq, founder of Bait Maryam.

The Mirdif opening joins Bait Maryam in Jumeirah Lakes Towers and 06 Mall Sharjah, alongside the group’s elevated Levantine concept, Sufret Maryam.

La Niña brings its vibrant Latino-Iberian spirit to the week with a curated lineup of dining, music, and entertainment experiences. From refined weekday lunches and after-work tapas to immersive cultural nights, family brunches, and high-energy weekend celebrations, each concept offers guests a distinctive way to experience the restaurant’s signature blend of flavour, atmosphere, and Latin flair.

Please see below La Nina’s weekly lineup:

Tuesday – Friday

Business Lunch

A refined midday offering available from 12:00pm to 3:30pm, starting from AED 115.

Copas y Tapas

Our afterwork experience featuring two tapas and two drinks for AED 95, available from 4:30pm onwards.

Tuesday

La Experiencia

A five-course menu paired with two glasses of wine for AED 280 per person, available from 7:30pm onwards.

Wednesday

Vera Tulum

A bohemian-inspired evening of music and connection, bringing a relaxed yet elevated atmosphere to the venue from 8:00pm onwards.

Thursday

Bombón

Our signature modern salsa night, blending live performances, Latin energy, and a lively social atmosphere from 7:30pm onwards.

Saturday

La Comida – Family Brunch

Our Latino-Iberian family brunch experience, available from 1:00pm onwards, starting from AED 235.

Al-Andalus Nights

An evening inspired by the cultural connection between Andalusia and the Arab world, featuring live music and entertainment from 7:30pm onwards.

Sunday

Loco Sundays

Our newest weekly concept, taking guests from brunch into dinner and late-night celebrations, with 14 hours of continuous entertainment from 2:00pm onwards.