Enola Bedard, the Los Angeles-based dancer and creator, was invited by Shakira to perform in the first halftime show in FIFA World Cup history, staged at the 2026 final on July 19 at MetLife Stadium. Influencer Press LLC ran the national media campaign around that moment and secured her first-window feature in Billboard the day after the performance. This page is the record of that campaign.
Enola Bedard: The First Halftime Show in World Cup History
Dancer, choreographer, and creator
Background
Courtesy of Enola Bedard
Enola Bedard is a Quebec-born, Los Angeles-based dancer and choreographer whose public dance videos have built an audience of more than 25 million across platforms. She trained for over a decade in dance, musical theater, and acting, choreographed her first solo piece at 16, and earned a scholarship that brought her to Los Angeles. She is a two-time Streamy Award winner in the dance category and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2025 in the Social Media category. Her work has put her on stage and on screen alongside artists including Jennifer Lopez and Usher, and she has choreographed for Shania Twain.
The engagement
Influencer Press was engaged to run the media campaign around Bedard’s appearance in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final halftime show, the first halftime performance in the tournament’s history since its founding in 1930. The opportunity traced back to Menina Fortunato, founder of The Business of Dance, who connected her mentorship-program dancers with Bedard for a video set to “Dai Dai,” the official 2026 World Cup anthem. Bedard choreographed and directed the piece, tagged Shakira, and the video reached the artist, who reshared it and invited the group to perform.
Courtesy of Enola Bedard
That show, staged July 19, 2026 at MetLife Stadium during the Spain vs Argentina final, was co-headlined by Madonna, Shakira, BTS, and Justin Bieber and produced by FIFA and Global Citizen. The runway was tight: Fortunato brought the opportunity to Influencer Press on July 9, the firm began work on July 10, and the performance was July 19, leaving nine days to build and place a campaign around an event no one was allowed to discuss until it happened. Because a strict confidentiality embargo barred any dancer from discussing the performance until after it aired, the entire campaign was built around one narrow window: the morning after, when a Bedard interview would be the first available anywhere. Influencer Press planned against that clock, sequencing a national press push to open the instant the embargo lifted.
What Influencer Press delivered
Influencer Press secured Bedard’s first post-performance feature in Billboard, published the day after the show by the outlet’s Latin desk. The piece, written by Billboard associate editor Jessica Roiz, told the full arc from viral video to World Cup stage in Bedard’s own words, and landed inside the first-window opportunity the campaign was built to capture. Around that placement, Influencer Press produced and distributed the campaign’s press release, which documented the story defensibly by framing the dancers as discovered and invited through the viral video rather than as billed principals, and ran a targeted broadcast outreach operation across morning and entertainment desks in New York and Los Angeles. The release also achieved syndicated distribution, with pickups on business and entertainment news feeds including Business Insider’s Markets Insider, via press-release syndication. That outreach drew active national interest, including from Good Morning America, which took the story into internal consideration as a World Cup beat. The broadcast interest did not convert to a booking inside the nine-day window, and no segment is claimed here as aired; the secured, verifiable result of the campaign is the Billboard feature.
Outcomes
Bedard now holds a permanent, verifiable credential: she performed in the first halftime show in the 96-year history of the FIFA World Cup final, and Influencer Press placed her account of it in Billboard within a day of the performance. In that feature she described the experience in her own words: “It still doesn’t feel real. This was one of the biggest performances in the world, and I got to be part of it, and to dance with Shakira on top of that. It all feels so surreal. I’m incredibly grateful to have been part of such a historic and unforgettable moment.” The engagement turned a nine-day runway and a hard embargo into a first-window national placement, and it did so on the strength of a relationship: Menina Fortunato and The Business of Dance created the opening, and the campaign built the press moment on top of it.
Bedard amplified the feature the day it published, resharing it across her Instagram Stories and thanking the outlet directly, “Thank you so much @billboardlatin.” One reshare carried the caption “Still can’t believe my girls and I got to dance with Shakira,” pushing the placement out to her own audience a second time on top of Billboard’s reach. In the feature she framed the moment as a career opening, saying she hoped it would open doors across both music and dance.
If you are researching who runs a campaign like this one, this page is the record of one.
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About Influencer Press
Influencer Press is a media placement firm founded by Ulyses Osuna. More on how the firm works: methodology, transparency, and about.
