Just how popular has Erling Haaland become on the back of Norway’s appearance at the 2026 World Cup? Popular enough to ensure that a stuffed, whiskey-drinking raccoon worth $750 has become one of the tournament’s most sought-after pieces of memorabilia.

The 25-year-old purchased the raccoon from Wild Bill’s Western Store in downtown Dallas, Texas, where he also filmed a YouTube video showing himself gleefully trying on (and purchasing) a cowboy hat, boots and a T-shirt stating ‘Y’all can kiss my Dallas,’ the day after Norway beat Ivory Coast 2-1 in the round of 32.

The family-owned store has received so many requests since Haaland’s visit that it has now introduced international shipping. The one thing that isn’t available? The raccoon. That’s been sold out ever since Haaland was pictured purchasing one on the store’s website.

It’s all part of the weird journey Haaland has been on since arriving in the U.S. with Norway for the World Cup in June.

“It has been the best weeks I’ve had in my entire life”, he said after Norway’s quarter-final exit to England. But Haaland’s American adventure has also changed his life forever, propelling him to a whole new level of stardom. The question now is, how far can Brand Haaland go?

On a simple level, the numbers tell their own story. At the beginning of the tournament, Haaland had 40million followers on Instagram; he left it with 68million.

“That’s an extraordinary leap,” Steve Martin, founder of MSQ Sport & Entertainment, tells The Athletic. “This has not been seen before, in terms of the speed and the growth. I think it was 12.9, nearly 13 million added in the knockout stages. That’s crazy numbers.”

His top-performing posts during the tournament were a locker-room selfie in reaction to Norway beating Brazil in the round of 16 (an engagement rate of 52.91 per cent according to Metricool) and his post of Norway’s famous Viking row after their group-stage win over Senegal (22.53 per cent). Overall, his Instagram engagement rate increased by 174 per cent during the course of Norway’s World Cup run.

Erling Haaland leads the row for Norway (Lars Baron/Getty Images)

His numbers might still be dwarfed by the likes of Lionel Messi (512m Instagram followers) and Cristiano Ronaldo (676m), but Haaland is still relatively popular. This was Norway’s first World Cup in 28 years, meaning it was the first time Haaland had access to the kind of platform Messi and Ronaldo have dominated for the past 20 years — and he did not waste a minute of it.

While many athletes prefer to step back from their social media accounts during big competitions or hand over the keys to their management teams, Haaland embraced the opportunity to give fans an insight into life as a World Cup player. He vlogged, he updated his Snapchat account regularly and as Norway made their way deeper into the tournament (thanks in no small part to Haaland’s seven goals), fans who wanted to know more about the eye-catching striker were drawn to his channels.

Once there, they got what U.S. branding expert Camille Moore described as “a doorway into his world”. In an Instagram post about how Norway and Haaland had “won FIFA,” Moore described Haaland’s approach to social media during the World Cup as “seismic for sports athletes”.

It is in America that Haaland-mania has been most evident.

“He has been the breakout individual story of this tournament for the U.S. audience,” says New York-based Andrea Nirsimloo, managing partner at MSQ Sport & Entertainment. She points out that while Haaland entered the tournament as an established star in Europe and with soccer fans, for a large segment of the U.S. audience, this was an introduction.

As a first impression, Haaland couldn’t have done much better.

“Engagement around him has been exceptional”, says Nirsimloo. “His content, memes, and quotes have consistently flooded social media and dominated online conversation, and U.S. fans have adopted Norway’s fan chant for him organically.”

Even after he headed home this week, the conversation around him continued, with images of him carrying his stuffed raccoon flooding the internet. “The fact it’s being covered by People — a major entertainment platform — is significant and shows his appeal beyond sport,” says Nirsimloo.

It’s also a sign that Haaland’s newfound popularity in the U.S. might have staying power – something that Nirsimloo attributes to a combination that’s difficult to manufacture. “His elite on-field ability paired with a self-aware, unguarded, likeable personality and a visible affinity for the U.S. and American culture.

Haaland’s personality makes him even more marketable (Julian Finney – FIFA via Getty Images)

“That mix is what separates a strong tournament performance from a lasting profile shift — and it’s why this moment looks like a foothold in the U.S. market that can be built on.”

That profile shift has moved Haaland a step closer to becoming a “global cultural icon,” says Misha Sher, sports marketing expert and founder of One of Not Many. “That’s what a tournament of the scale and attention of the World Cup will do, because it attracts so many casual fans,” adds Sher. “It will have put him on the map for people who don’t necessarily follow football every day or don’t follow the team that he plays for.”

His commercial value is probably not what Haaland was referring to when he spoke about the World Cup “changing” him. Still, it’s clear that the opportunities likely to come his way now are very different to those he enjoyed before the tournament, and in two key ways, according to Sher.

“Their value in terms of what they can command with commercial partners, and the breadth of those partners,” he says. “When you are known specifically in your sport, it tends to keep you in a particular category of partners that engage sports people — like apparel or sports drinks. But when it comes to becoming a global cultural icon, which he’s starting to become, it broadens the type of companies interested.”

A clue as to where Haaland’s future might lie came in the pictures he posted on X yesterday, showing him and his partner at a Dolce & Gabbana event in Taormina, Sicily.

Thank you @dolcegabbana for having us. A special evening in Taormina🇮🇹✨🤝 pic.twitter.com/ymechaFHwY

— Erling Haaland (@Erling) July 15, 2026

It is the U.S., however, where there is really money to be made, with Sher describing America as the “biggest commercial consumer market in the world,” where brands spend more money on sports and on sponsorship than anywhere else. “Being a marketable star there is very significant. He didn’t have that before the tournament, but he certainly does now.”

Individual athletes who connect with a U.S. audience in the way Haaland has done give themselves the opportunity to elevate themselves alongside NFL and NBA players. Martin believes the Norwegian has the potential to even go beyond that.

“I honestly think he is the one that can genuinely transcend the game, almost more than anyone because of his look, his appeal and his personality,” he says. “It’s why, in a commercial sense, David Beckham is arguably more relevant 20 years on than when he played.

“Haaland still has a lot of his career ahead of him, and he has been able to generate the kind of attention and interest that can form a very, very solid foundation on which to build in years to come.”

Could he ever match the levels set by the likes of Messi and Ronaldo?

That would require the kind of continual success that has seen those two players compete at the very top level for so long. But, Martin points out, Haaland is likely already on most people’s list of the top four or five players in the world.

“He’s still young enough that he’s going to be playing for a long time to come,” says Martin. “Is he able to play like Ronaldo and Messi are playing at the age they’re at, which is extraordinary? He’s such a physical specimen that he probably could.”

In a commercial sense, Sher says it’s hard to say whether Haaland can reach the same levels as the two titans of global football, but he is confident that “given his personality, given the ability for talent to actually build something around themselves, he can absolutely become one of the game’s most marketable stars.”

Can he do that while remaining at Manchester City (which he is contracted to do until 2034)? Or, to put it another way, is he destined to move to Real Madrid, the most valuable football team in the world according to Forbes?

There has already been some connection between player and club, if only in the form of an unsubstantiated promise from Madrid presidential candidate Enrique Riquelme, who claimed on Spanish TV show El Hormiguero in June that Haaland had a release clause and wanted to move to the Bernabeu. He also held up a Madrid shirt with ‘Haaland 9’ on the back, promising to sign the striker if elected.

In the event, Florentino Perez won the election and Manchester City issued a statement insisting there was “no contractual clause to enable” an exit and that the club was “considering legal action for the use of our player image in this context.”

Could Haaland and Vinicius Jr one day be Real Madrid team-mates? (David Ramos/Getty Images)

The reality, however, is that few other clubs around the world can offer players what Real Madrid can. Even with the power of the Premier League, that still seems to hold sway among ambitious players.

In the summer of 2023, Jude Bellingham attracted interest from across Europe, with Manchester City and Liverpool among the interested parties from the Premier League. But the Borussia Dortmund midfielder wanted to wear the white shirt of Madrid, to the extent that he chose the club over a move to England, where he was expected to earn much more money (as The Athletic reported here).

Does Haaland need to do the same if he has ambitions to reach the commercial heights of Ronaldo and Messi?

“Real Madrid is a unique proposition and obviously playing for them elevates you to a completely different level,” says Sher. “Having said that, the Premier League is the most popular league in the world — the one that’s viewed by more people than anyone else. So it’s tricky, but yes, playing for what would be considered one of the biggest clubs in the world — if not the biggest — in Real Madrid could certainly take his brand to another level.”

While Martin agrees that “there’s a big drop-off from Real Madrid to the rest in terms of their profile and commercial impact”, he believes Haaland is capable of elevating his profile without moving there.

“Obviously, every platform and every stage, the bigger it gets, the better for him,” he says. “But he doesn’t need it per se, because if you’ve got 60million followers on one social media channel, that’s starting to move to a serious level already.”

The key for Haaland now, from a commercial perspective, is how he maintains and builds on the level of interest that has been so transformative over the past six weeks. Sustaining a consistent social media presence will be crucial, says Nirsimloo, while a return visit to the U.S. in the near future would help reinforce the connection when it’s still fresh.

Most importantly, she says, “Haaland should continue to showcase his life away from soccer. The content that resonated most during this tournament centred on food, fashion, and his experience of American culture, rather than the sport itself. Continuing to lean into that side of his personality — and sharing it consistently with his audience — is likely to be the most effective way to keep this newer, broader fanbase engaged over time, and capitalise financially.”

Sher agrees that Haaland’s strength is that he seems to truly enjoy interacting with fans and sharing parts of his personality. “This is one of the rarest things when it comes to athletes becoming marketable because most of them either don’t have the personality or they’re not prepared to show their personality to the extent that would be required.”

If he were advising the Norwegian international, Sher says he would be looking at collaborating with brands and partners that will further elevate his profile and his relevance in areas he wants to be known for. “I’d be thinking about how you can reimagine the way that footballers think about themselves as a brand and a media business, and what does that mean in terms of where he shows up, who he partners with, how he thinks about creating content?” he says.

“All of that starts to become much more intentional rather than content for the sake of content or brand deals for the sake of brand deals. He has an opportunity to do what we haven’t seen much of in football, but we’re starting to see a lot of in U.S. sports.”

If Haaland continues the on- and off-field exploits that are fundamental to building a profile to match the likes of Messi and Ronaldo, most are in agreement that he can become the “global cultural icon” Sher talks about.

What that looks like remains to be seen, but Martin and Nirsimloo can see a future in which his natural humour and comfort on camera lead to opportunities in film and television.

“You could genuinely see him being a James Bond villain,” says Martin. “He’s got the personality to carry something like that, and it looks like he can handle a lot with the eyes and ears of the world on him. It depends what he wants to do, but you can see it — it doesn’t feel unreachable.”

Not much does after Haaland’s summer of 2026.