FIFA picked its 2026 World Cup host cities on Thursday, all 16 of them, and you know what that means: articles about the enormous economic windfall this will result in for the winners! You’re up first, KCTV in Kansas City:
A World Cup match will bring tens of thousands of visitors to Kansas City from all over the world and experts believe it’s going to be a windfall for the local economy…
“This could be a dynamic element for Kansas City worldwide,” said Tony Tocco. “I hope we take advantage of it.”
Tocco is a business and accounting professor at Rockhurst University. He’s also a big soccer fan…
Depending on what kind of match we end up with, we could be looking at $100-400 million in revenue from out-of-town visitors. Our hotels will be booked and the bars will be packed.
A “business and accounting professor” isn’t exactly an expert in economic impact — he teaches business management, basically — but I suppose we should allow some small props to KCTV for picking up the phone and calling someone vaguely experty, rather than just going with what was in the press release.
What about the Atlanta Business Chronicle, did they manage to find someone who’s actually read the economic literature on mega-event impact?
Hosting World Cup matches could mean hundreds of millions in revenue for the city. Retailers and restaurants would also get a revenue boost. More than 5 million tourists visited Russia during the 2018 World Cup, according to FIFA, global governing body of soccer. Equally as many people could visit the Persian Gulf to attend 2022 World Cup matches in Qatar in November…
Hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup could generate more than $5 billion in short-term economic activity. That would include thousands of temporary jobs (security, for example), generating more than $1 billion in temporary worker earnings across North America, according to a study done by Boston Consulting Group, a leading global management consulting firm.
For Atlanta specifically, there is an estimated $415 million net economic benefit, according to the study.
Nope! That Boston Consulting Group paper was written under contract to the 2026 World Cup bid committee, way back in 2018. Also in that year, College of the Holy Cross economist — and also a big soccer fan, like Tocco — Victor Matheson wrote a paper entitled “The Economics of the World Cup” that observed regarding economic impact forecasts that “at times, the predictions are so outlandish as to defy common sense” and that after-the-fact studies of economic numbers show that “the observed impact of the World Cup has been a fraction that touted by the event boosters, and frequently the observed impact has actually been negative.” He even provided a handy table:
Part of the reason for the World Cup’s dismal economic results has to do with the high costs of hosting matches: Host cities and states have agreed to kick back sales taxes on tickets and pay for stadium upgrades in order to get chosen, reports the Guardian. (Though it, too, uncritically cites FIFA’s claim that the Cup will result in $5 billion in new economic activity.) Several cities including Chicago and Montreal, reports Mother Jones, took themselves out of the running because they didn’t want to meet FIFA’s demands.
When you add in substitution effects (people spending money on soccer matches will cut back on spending on other things), crowding out (non-soccer tourists will steer clear of the U.S. during the Cup because they won’t want to have to fight for hotel rooms), and the fact that under the expanded format starting in 2026 a lot of cities will be getting matchups unlikely to generate huge tourism — Faroe Islands vs. Andorra, anyone? — there’s really no reason to expect a significant windfall for U.S. host cities in 2026. But we’re likely to keep getting these articles so long as FIFA and some business professors are around to claim otherwise, and media outlets are willing to go with official-wisdom journalism, which seems like it’ll be forever, probably.
The “economic impact” of even a premier World Cup matchup in a place like Miami would be akin to a typical Tuesday evening in South Beach.
But really, if we’ve learned anything about media practices going back to, say, 2015 (and in hindsight, even further back than that), it’s that wilfully getting bad info out there IS the point. Rendering corrections and retractions meaningless, no matter the subject, IS the point. Nobody remembers when people delete tweets with disinfo in them; we only recall what was in those tweets in the first place.
Guardian= “Some experts have cast doubts on the economic benefits of hosting large sporting events”.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jun/16/fifa-world-cup-2026-host-cities-usa-mexico-canada
On the plus side 2026 won’t involve new stadia. (Thelretocally)
So far two of the “winning” host cities have said they will need to spend about $250m to host their 4-6 games. This, allegedly, includes stadium upgrades and security costs etc.
So, at an avg attendance of 50,000 – assuming all attendees are paying customers – the host cities will need to generate $1,000 per fan in net tax revenue (after FIFA, the federal gov’t and others wet their beaks) just to break even.
Even if we assign a ridiculous 10% tax on fan spending related to the event, each attendee will have to spend $10,000 in the host city (not counting airfare etc) to make breaking even possible.
Gee, you know, I just don’t think that is very likely.
Judging from the 94 World Cup, average attendance will probably be close to average capacity, near 70,000. But you’re right about free tickets. Outside of Soldier Field in 94, most of the scalpers were selling Fifa comp’d tickets. And most of the drinking took place outside the stadium too.
For the larger venues/group games, sure… but not all games will be played in 70k seat stadia. I read somewhere years ago that for most major FIFA/UEFA finals, the total number of comp’ed tickets can push near 40% of capacity (obviously it’s more for QF/SF/Final matches than the group games).
I figured 50k paying customers would be the absolute max you could expect… and I don’t really think you’d get that number for most matches.
As far as I could tell looking at the venues, all of the venues in the US and Canada can do at least 60k, except BMO in Toronto. That’s normally 30k and can be expanded to 40k. I’m unclear what Mexico’s three stadiums are planning in terms of expansion or not.
In the US, they’ve chosen all NFL stadiums and no MLS stadiums. And, incidentally, no stadium used in 1994 will be used for 2026. I’m pretty sure all of the US stadiums that will be used in 2026 did not exist in 1994, but I’d have to review the list again.
The cost of this cup, per city, will probably be a lot lower than any of the recent ones because they’re using all existing stadiums. It’s just an historical accident that the US and Canada have these big stadiums for a different sport that can be easily adapted for soccer.
Some people were crying that it was unfair for rich countries to take this “honor” from Morocco, but really, FIFA, US, Canada and Mexico did Morocco a huge favor.
Morocco’s domestic league does play in some pretty big stadiums, but they’d have had to build a few more and, according to the data I could find, none of their teams draws more than 17k. That is perfectly reasonable for a league of that level – I’m not saying they don’t care about soccer – but they really couldn’t use a bunch of brand new big stadiums going forward. They’d have been left with a bunch of white elephants, just like South Africa and Brazil.
It is is telling that some cities that have recently been willing to splash out money for stadium projects – Minneapolis, for example – folded their hands early in this game because FIFA was asking for too much.
I’m sure it will generate a lot of economic activity in each of these cities. Probably more than any other thing they could get to fill hotels and restaurants in the middle of summer (not all that many conventions in the summer, for example).
But the municipalities and states probably won’t get enough back in taxes to cover their outlay. So it’s essentially just a transfer of money from the public to the hospitality industry (and FIFA, of course).
Instead of this, why not just forget about these big sporting events and just have the taxpayers give the money directly to their local hospitality employees. Cut out the middle man. It would be cheaper. Has that occurred to anyone?
It’s the old bullshit. We have socialism in this country, but it’s only for the ownership class. For everyone else, its rugged individualism.
Post renovation, BC place has a maximum capacity of a little over 54k.
BMO was originally built as a 20k seater, then was expanded to 22k, then to just under 30k. The only time it has ‘held’ 40k was during the NHL’s winter classic – an event that does not actually use most of the football playing surface.
At that time it had about 34,000 seats total installed (for the Grey Cup earlier that fall)… the remainder of fans watched from the playing surface/endzones etc.
I have no doubt that they will temporarily expand it to close to 40,000 seats, but it is likely to be something similar to a couple of venues for the Russian world cup… where some of the seats were built outside the stadium proper with a narrow window where you can look in and see part of the game.
I’m hoping sanity prevails and they decide to build a temporary (or even permanent) 40,000 seat stadium at another site instead. It could be done for a lot less than the BMO renovations will cost.
Of course, they will not do that. They will spend a ridiculous amount of tax payer money adapting a stadium that was designed for 20k originally and it will be an unpleasant experience for everybody involved.
Arrowhead Stadium in KC was around in 1994 but the city wasn’t used for the World Cup that year. It will take about 50 million to transform Arrowhead to soccer size for 2026. Then they have to determine whether to keep the Chiefs there or build new afterwards, so yay us!!
It’s actually interesting they can tell FIFA that Arrowhead is fantastic for soccer while telling local leaders that it’s falling down and decrepit for continuing to play NFL football there around that same period of time. To quote Seinfeld, “that is one magic loogy”
Give it to the hospitality employees!!??
HAHAHAHA!
You give it to the hospitality OWNERS and they will let it “trickle” down to the employees. It’s the American way…..
The US sold out almost every game in 1994 even though soccer was a much, much, much, much less popular sport here back then. Now, soccer is on the verge of being the third most popular sport in the US and perhaps the second most popular sport in Canada. Of course, it is the most popular sport in Mexico.
Demand for tickets from North Americans will be much greater this time.
The wild card will be politics and how hard it is for overseas fans to get into the continent.
It is possible that the draw will yield some games between very small countries (although probably not the Faroe Islands or Andorra) but even the small countries travel well and, at the right price, they should be able to find enough local people who want to see Wales v New Zealand or whatever. I would, for the right price.
Oh, they’ll have no trouble selling tickets, I expect. But if most of those Wales-New Zealand tickets go to local soccer fans, that dampens any windfall from having Welsh folks and/or Kiwis come and spend big on hotels.
Reed: The world cup has always been more popular than domestic leagues in North America. The US & Canada went gaga over the 86, 90 and 94 world cups despite their being no real top tier domestic leagues in operation.
It has always seemed to me a bit like the Olympics… people will go wild over events that are included in the Olympics even though they would close the blinds if any of those events were put on as one off competitions in their own back yard.
Has anyone ever watched a national or regional qualifier for biathlon? How about Modern Pentathlon?
Put the five golden rings on an egg and spoon race, though, and you’ve got an instant money spinner…
Honestly, they would have been better off having one large metro host the whole thing. LA would be the obvious choice. Scattering World Cup crowds all over the continent will absolutely kill the vibe in my opinion. Plus, what a PITA for foreign visitors.
You’ll never get 16 cities to cough up money that way!
Also, L.A. still has the problem that it’s stadium is too narrow for a FIFA-optimal pitch. I’m sure they’ll figure out a new form of space-time by 2026 to resolve that.
Spreading the games out across a large area has never really been a problem. Russia and Brazil sites were far apart (Manaus and Porto Alegre 6 hour flight). And USA 94 had games in 9 cities coast to coast and still drew record attendance. You really don’t want too many soccer fans in once place at a time. They can get ugly.
It’s actually a good idea, agreed.
It reduces congestion in the major areas that would host more games under a ‘smaller footprint’ scenario, and given that taxpayers are always the ones footing the bill, I’d argue it gives more of the people who are actually paying for these things a chance to go see some games (sure, maybe it’s Tajikistan v the Federated States of Micronesia, but it’s still the WC…) reasonably close to home.
It will not kill the vibe. It’s always been done this way and the vibe is fine.
There is probably no way that even Los Angeles could host a 32 team tournament buy itself, let alone a 48 team event, without building a few new stadiums that would only be used for this.
That is, however, essentially what is asked of Olympic hosts and it’s an even worse boondoggle.
I mean, I haven’t been to all of them but I’ve attended Germany (74), Spain,Italy, the US, and France. 5 out of 5 of those are smaller than all of North America. I dunno, maybe because I grew up with congested summer tourism in Europe? But visiting fans create atmosphere and the more there are and the closer proximity is essential.
Yeah, I recall in ’94 soccer fans enjoying the atmosphere in cities like Chicago where they could walk to the game, but being disappointed in places like Pontiac where you needed a long bus ride.
Do we have vapourtechture of sparkling new seating areas?
We do!
Do they show very expensive expanded seating areas that aren’t actually in the stadium?
You Betcha!
Are some of the seating areas not only outside of the stadium but behind a section of stadium roof/canopy that was added during the last expansion???
Oh yes they are!!!!
https://www.bmofield.com/events/fifa26
According to the PR, the current seating for football (the european kind) is just under 28k. It is expected to increase to over 45k with the new outside the stadium but you can still see in seating installed.
Oy.
These numbers are trash!!! The World Cup had no effect on France’s tourism income??? Fake newsssssss
You have numbers that show otherwise?