World Cup stickers offer a lifeline to Brazil’s newspaper kiosks

Found all over Brazil’s cities, newspaper kiosks are facing something of a moment of reckoning. With the decline of print journalism, and the expansion of convenience shopping via smartphones during the pandemic, these stands are facing something of an identity crisis. But, for four months at the end of this year, they enjoyed a purple patch, thanks to Panini’s 2022 World Cup football sticker collection.

When this year’s album launched at the end of August, sales at newspaper kiosks skyrocketed 347.1 percent in relation to the same week in 2021, according to a survey by credit card service company Cielo.

Speaking to finance newspaper Valor, the head of a newspaper and magazine distributor’s association affirmed that 90 days of sales with the introduction of World Cup stickers equaled many vendors’ revenues for the entire year until that point.

Latin America, and particularly Brazil, is seen as one of Panini’s leading sticker markets around the globe. It is no coincidence that the company’s São Paulo factory is one of only two facilities that packages and distributes World Cup sticker packets.

“Brazil is one of the most important countries in the sticker market,” Martina Limoni, Panini’s head of Latin American business development, told The...