Sponsorship measurement firm FanLab says that official sponsors of the 2010 World Cup received substantially higher fan recall than official sponsors of the National Football League, according to a new survey by the firm.

In two separate studies, fans of each sport were presented with three business categories and asked to select the official sponsor. In each of the categories presented to World Cup fans, the official sponsor was chosen most often. In the NFL study, the official sponsor was not recognized most frequently in any of the three categories surveyed. The categories selected and the results from the study are shown below.

“Our data consistently shows that exposure does not guarantee a link, but World Cup sponsors had less than three weeks and made more of an impr...