Martin gave his first live performance of "La Copa de la Vida" for "Hey Hey It's Saturday" on June 4, 1998. On July 12, 1998, he performed as the official anthem at the 1998 FIFA World Cup Final in France, in front of more than a billion TV viewers around the world. Fabian Holt describes it as a "global moment for Latin pop" in his book "Genre in popular music". Although Latin music was not important to the Recording Academy or the mainstream music industry at the time, Tommy Mottola, then-chief of Columbia Records, was certain about Martin's stardom and pushed hard to have him on the Grammy Awards ceremony. During an interview with "Billboard", Mottola told the magazine about it: "There was tremendous resistance from the Grammys. They did not want an 'unknown' to perform, yet we he had already sold 10 million copies of "Vuelve" worldwide. To me, that was absolutely UNACCEPTABLE."