Fall 2026
The International (Dota 2)
Location TBA · global esports audience
Planning
IMB · Innovation Team
When the world watches, the gospel can be heard.
Every four years, billions gather for the World Cup and the Olympics. For a few weeks, the nations are in one place. We're there — on the ground and in the chat — to share the hope of Christ.
What is Global Sports Outreach?
Billions watching. A handful of weeks. One gospel.
Global Sports Outreach turns global sporting events like the Olympics and the World Cup into powerful opportunities for gospel impact. These events draw athletes and fans who are open to new cultures and conversations — creating natural moments for missionaries and trained volunteers to build relationships and share the hope of Christ.
NFC-equipped pins, multilingual responders, and YouVersion reading plans extend that reach far beyond what on-the-ground volunteers could do alone — and empower local believers to engage their communities during these events and sustain meaningful follow-up long after the crowds leave.
Featured Event
2026 FIFA World Cup
The 2026 World Cup will draw an estimated 5 billion viewers across the USA, Mexico, and Canada — the largest gathering of fans the tournament has ever seen.
We're staging on-the-ground teams in host cities and standing up multilingual digital responders to engage fans in 16+ languages, right where they're already paying attention.
5B
Projected Viewers
48
Nations Competing
16
Host Cities
Featured Event
Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics
The 2026 Winter Olympics open in Italy this February. Tourists, athletes, and broadcast crews from across the globe will descend on Milan and Cortina for two weeks.
IMB teams will be there with Bibles in multiple languages, NFC gospel pins for the famous Olympic pin-trading tradition, and digital responders ready to chat with anyone who scans a pin and wants to learn more about Jesus.
2.9M
Tickets Sold
93
Nations Competing
16
Responder Languages
A moment from Paris, 2024
The Story
Three pins. One conversation that didn't end.
Saint-Denis. The velodrome. The closing-ceremony hall. Three different pins, three different venues, three different reasons for a fan to keep showing up.
A pin trader collected all of them. Each one carried an NFC tag that opened a gospel landing page in his language. He tapped. He asked questions. He ended up chatting live with a responder watching from her living room, three time zones away.
When the Games closed, his conversation didn't. The responder handed him off to an IMB worker already serving in his home country. He's still reading the Bible. He's still asking questions.
This is what funding does. This is what showing up does.
2026 is the moment Paris was rehearsal for.
A representative story drawn from how the Paris 2024 strategy was designed and documented to work. Specific details composited from public IMB reporting.
Why It Works
A pin in your hand. A reading plan on your phone. A real person to talk to.
01
Tangible touchpoint
Custom-designed gospel pins, sought after by pin traders, carry NFC tags that open a landing page with the gospel and a Bible reading plan.
02
Digital follow-up
A YouVersion plan and live chat in 16+ languages mean a curious fan doesn't have to wait — or speak English — to keep the conversation going.
03
Long-term handoff
Responders connect interested fans to an IMB missionary serving in their country — so the conversation continues long after the closing ceremony.
Voices
Real people. Real work.
"I was in my pajamas in Atlanta, but I was talking with a fan in Tokyo about Jesus. That sentence didn't exist five years ago."
"I handed out forty pins in one afternoon at the fan zone. By the next morning, three of them had triggered live chats. The pin is small. The conversation isn't."
"A woman in São Paulo messaged me a week after the Olympics ended. She'd been chatting with a responder she'd never meet. She wanted to know if there was anyone like that in her city. There was. Me."
Voices are representative — composited from how the strategy is designed and documented to operate. Real quotes from past responders and missionaries will replace these as IMB releases them.
The Clock
~3
weeks to World Cup kickoff
Recently completed
Tokyo Deaflympics · Milano-Cortina Olympics
The strategy just proved itself. Now it scales.
Tokyo and Milano-Cortina worked — gospel conversations at venues, pin trades that opened sign-language landing pages, social ads driving tens of thousands into chat with multilingual responders.
The World Cup kicks off in mid-June. Three weeks. Pin production, responder training, team logistics, ad buys — they're all decided right now.
Don't just watch the World Cup. Be part of it.
Your gift sends teams, prints Bibles, makes pins, and trains responders.
Events
Where we've been. Where we're going.
Major global sporting events on our timeline — recent proof and upcoming moments where billions watch and millions travel.
Nov 2025
Tokyo Deaflympics
Tokyo, Japan
Completed
Feb 2026
Winter Olympics
Milano · Cortina
Completed
Jun–Jul 2026
FIFA World Cup
USA · Mexico · Canada
Soon
Sep–Oct 2026
Asian Games (incl. esports)
Aichi · Nagoya, Japan
Planning
2027
Cricket World Cup
South Africa · Zimbabwe · Namibia
Exploring
2028
Summer Olympics
Los Angeles
Exploring