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Fourteen. That’s how many Michelob ULTRA Superior Player of the Match awards have gone to players who call Real Madrid home during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. For context, Barcelona’s count sits at a clean zero.
The names behind the numbers
Vinícius Júnior has been the most absurd individual performer of the tournament so far. The Brazilian forward collected a Player of the Match award in every single one of Brazil’s group stage games. Not some of them. All of them.
Jude Bellingham and Kylian Mbappé have each stacked multiple awards of their own, representing England and France respectively.
The MOTM awards are determined by fan voting across all 104 matches of the tournament.
The 2026 World Cup, hosted across Canada, Mexico, and the United States, runs through mid-July.
What this tells us about the sports-money machine
The 2026 tournament features Kraken as a sponsor, marking one of the more visible intersections of a major crypto exchange and the world’s most-watched sporting event. While the Player of the Match awards themselves don’t incorporate any blockchain or cryptocurrency elements, the broader tournament ecosystem is actively courting the digital asset industry.
Fan tokens, which surged in popularity during the 2022 World Cup cycle, represent another layer of this convergence. Clubs like Real Madrid and national football federations have explored tokenized fan engagement platforms that allow holders to participate in polls, access exclusive content, and in some cases influence minor club decisions. The fan-voting mechanism behind the MOTM awards, while currently run through traditional channels, sits conceptually close to the kind of engagement that fan token platforms are designed to capture.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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