Erling Haaland and the AI Meme Boom at the 2026 World Cup

A viral video of Erling Haaland in a restaurant, which one post on X racked up more than 31 million views in mere days, was not him. Fact checkers traced the footage to a slapstick skit by the Chinese comedian Jin Long, posted to TikTok in mid-June, yet the clip continued to circulate through the fourth week of the 2026 World Cup.

How did the Haaland deepfake spread?

The clip’s origins are concrete: a mid-June TikTok skit by Jin Long produced the footage, and one post on X attracted more than 31 million views, but corrections did not halt its spread. The fake built on an existing China-focused Haaland culture: he fronted a commercial for a Chinese herbal drink, learned bits of Mandarin, and launched official Douyin and Weibo accounts that quickly amassed millions of followers, while his personal Snapchat account has 3.3 million followers.

The video arrived into an environment already primed for remix. Fans had been turning Haaland into a recurring character online, rechristening him Habao and making him the subject of memes, edits, and fan-created lore. Because that character already existed, the deepfake fit the joke and spread as a new instalment in an evolving fan narrative.

How are AI edits changing athlete fandom?

Gen Z’s relationship with sports content is shifting toward personality-driven engagement: a WSC Sports report found Gen Z feels more connected to individual athletes than to teams, and a survey by Oliver Wyman found social media content from athletes is the single largest driver of Gen Z sports engagement. AI accelerates the production of fan content, letting audiences create new scenes, jokes, and canon without the athlete’s involvement.

That shift lets fans treat athletes like fictional characters with «fanon»—audience-invented material that fills gaps left by official narratives. The Wired excerpt places Haaland’s deepfake in a broader pattern of AI-driven fan creations: the @deeptomcruise deepfakes on TikTok began in 2021 and were widely celebrated; an AI-generated track mimicking Drake and The Weeknd circulated in 2023 and was streamed before labels intervened; and the 2023 Balenciaga Pope stunt briefly fooled half the internet and produced more attention for a coat than for questions about AI.

The piece also points to parallel memes around Kylian Mbappé, where “Dictator Mbappé” imagery that dates back to 2023 has resurfaced and multiplied in AI-rendered forms during this tournament. Those examples show how the tools for imitation and remix have matured and entered mainstream fan behavior.

Why it matters

The Haaland case shows celebrity turning into an open-source character that audiences can remix at scale, reducing the old celebrity economy’s dependence on access to the star. Corrections and fact checks mattered little in practice: the piece notes that fact checkers traced and corrected the video, "and yet the clip kept traveling anyway." Many users actively opt into these edits because they fit the character fans have already built, not because they are true.

That dynamic shifts control of public image away from traditional gatekeepers: teams, brands, and media no longer fully own a player’s narrative when millions of fan-made variants can be created and spread rapidly. It also exposes rights-holders and platforms to repeated tests over content removal and attribution, as previous incidents required label intervention or takedowns.

What to watch

Watch for how rights-holders and platforms respond to high-profile fan-made AI content: the 2023 AI track was streamed widely before labels could pull it, and similar takedown fights may emerge around World Cup material. Also watch whether athletes themselves lean into or try to reclaim their characters: Haaland’s official Douyin and Weibo launches, and his 3.3 million-follower Snapchat presence, show one path for stars to influence how their persona is remixed.

The Haaland deepfake is not an outlier so much as a proof of concept: AI makes it cheap to join an ongoing fan narrative, and the next viral edit will test whether platforms, rights-holders or the athletes change how that story gets told.