Erling Haaland's Global Campaign for Walovi
Erling Haaland has dominated penalty areas for years. Now he is suddenly everywhere off the pitch as well – including in the ad breaks of the World Cup – with a Chinese herbal drink in his hand.
The product is called Walovi, and if you have watched even a handful of Fifa World Cup 2026 broadcasts or scrolled through football content on social media, you have almost certainly seen it. Haaland, Norway’s fearsome No 9 and one of the most recognisable faces in the sport, fronts a slick campaign that has pushed the drink into the global conversation.
The premise is simple: take a traditional-style Chinese herbal beverage and attach it to the most prolific striker of his generation. The result is a collision of cultures and markets – a centuries-old wellness aesthetic packaged with a hyper-modern, data-era football superstar.
The ads are impossible to miss. Haaland, all sharp angles and ice-cold expression, raises the bottle, the branding splashed in bold colours. The message is clear: this is not some obscure local tonic any more. It wants to sit alongside the biggest names in sports drinks, energy boosters and lifestyle beverages, and it is using one of the game’s deadliest finishers to get there.
For viewers locked into the World Cup, Walovi has become part of the background noise of the tournament – the kind of product you start to recognise before the logo even appears. For the company behind it, that is the point. For Haaland, it is another step in a commercial portfolio that stretches far beyond the touchline.
In a World Cup saturated with brands fighting for a moment of attention, a Chinese herbal drink riding on the shoulders of a 6ft 4in goal machine might just be one of the most striking partnerships of the tournament.
