What MLS’s CMO learned from the World Cup summer

It’s been quite the summer for Major League Soccer—and for CMO Radhika Duggal.

Duggal was less than two years into the role, her first in the sports industry entirely, when the FIFA World Cup, featuring several top MLS players, kicked off. Prior to joining MLS, Duggal worked at Deloitte consulting for Fortune 500 companies, and she held marketing leadership roles at major pharmaceutical and financial brands, including Pfizer and Chase.

Her background led her to take a fairly data-driven approach to the league’s marketing strategy, which lines up with broader efforts across soccer and other sports to capitalize on fan intelligence. But data isn’t everything, and she told us modern marketers should place just as much emphasis on creativity as they should on metrics and measurement.

“Marketers feel like they still have to be, ‘I’m the artist,’ or ‘I’m the scientist.’ I care about data, or I care about creativity,” Duggal said. “In 2026, a CMO has to be both.”

It’s a philosophy that Duggal carried into MLS’s marketing work surrounding the World Cup: The league’s kickoff campaign for its 31st season in mid-February was hyperfocused on humanity, with emphasis on players and celebrities, including team owners.

“People fall in love with other people,” Duggal told us at the time.

More recently, coming out of the World Cup, Duggal and her team doubled down on the athletes, working to highlight the 45 MLS players who competed in the World Cup. The campaign, which started running July 13, is so far driving the results Duggal said she was hoping to see.

“We’re seeing an uptick in viewership and ticketing, which were the primary quantitative outcomes we were trying to drive,” she said. “That was our goal, because we knew that when we get people to watch our product—whether it’s in-stadium, whether following us on social, whether watching our broadcast on Apple TV—we know that’s when people fall in love with our product, because it’s just such a fun experience.”

Duggal is set to speak at the Marketing Brew Summit on September 30, and we recently sat down with her to chat about lessons from the World Cup, her career outside of sports, and more. You can watch our full conversation below.