Months after the 2026 FIFA World Cup final — the event with the biggest impact on Soccer.com sales — the retailer is planning for the Cyber 5.
The five-day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday generates traffic increases for the retailer, as do other sales holidays such as Memorial, Independence and Labor days.
“Those are meaningful to us as shopping holidays, but for us, it’s more seasonal,” Billy Lalor, director of consumer merchandising for Soccer.com.
He told Digital Commerce 360 that the retailer benefits from increased web traffic around typical shopping holidays, “but they’re not peaks in the way that maybe they are for more general retailers.” Instead, Soccer.com is “just getting over the bell curve of the large peak.” From late July through late August, soccer players are typically getting ready to go back to playing for school or club teams. They gear up for the fall season.
Lalor has noticed that youth-sized fan merchandise tied to the World Cup did not sell through as much as Soccer.com had expected going into the event. He said he wouldn’t characterize those sales as struggling, but he observed they didn’t receive the type of benefit that both adult men’s and women’s products did. Now, he sees youth apparel benefiting from back-to-school season.
When Soccer.com begins preparing for sales peaks
Soccer.com plans its merchandising farther out than six or seven months, according to Lalor. And during a World Cup year, it also had to plan for the sport’s overall growth in the U.S.
So for the Cyber 5, “which is now Cyber Month,” Lalor remarked, Soccer.com already had a plan by the time summer starts.
“There’s nothing particularly significant in terms of product launches around that time that you can put out there to drive a lot of traffic and revenue,” Lalor said.
Instead, consumers are expecting promotions in which they can buy a lot and still save money, he added. And he expects that trend to continue into the 2026 Cyber 5. Part of this year’s challenge will be the accompanying macroeconomic conditions, such as inflation and rising fuel costs.
Lalor noted that macroeconomic conditions have affected Soccer.com’s expenses this year. However, they did not affect the retailer’s supply or timing.
“Flying in the face of that World Cup and soccer momentum,” Lalor said. “We recognize that. The marketplace is going to be as promotional as ever, is my feeling. There’s probably going to still be product left over that people have from the World Cup that they’re going to want to liquidate by the end of the year. So I think there’s going to be a lot of value to be had. We will be promotional within that.”
Soccer.com tries to be “no more promotional than we have to be,” he added. The retailer’s promotions will depend on inventory levels, which Lalor said were “pretty healthy” going into Q4.
Although he doesn’t expect Soccer.com to discount heavily, he expects it to have “some strong offers.” It will be competing not just with the soccer space but with sporting goods retailers at large.
How the Cyber 5 in 2025 affected Soccer.com sales
Lalor said Soccer.com grew sales during the Cyber 5 in 2025 versus 2024. However, he qualified that by noting that Adidas and Puma launched their first wave of World Cup products around that time.
That first wave included products such as home jerseys, the World Cup ball and related assortments.
“So we already got a World Cup bump at holiday,” he said, noticing that there was an overall downward sales trend for Soccer.com during Q4 2025 ahead of those launches.
“And typically, we don’t expect our growth rates outside of that time period to differ much from our growth rate before and after that period,” Lalor added. “We don’t necessarily use it for customer acquisition that much. It depends on how much inventory we need to turn as to how aggressive we need to be or how much we’re going to grow. Margin is always a rate that’s not desirable and not sustainable outside of those five days. So it kind of depends situationally.”
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