I was on a stadium panel at Baruch College yesterday — video evidence to be available shortly, I hope — and one of the points I tried to make was that both elected officials and voters need to closely examine stadium deals, because the total costs almost always involve something hidden in the fine print, often around who gets what revenues and who pays for what operating expenses.
And while the latest news about the 2026 Men’s World Cup isn’t a stadium story per se, it does reveal the importance for cities to pay attention to the details when signing major sports deals:
The new “Host City Supporter” programme … involved the host cities – Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, to go with two in Canada and three in Mexico – signing up to contracts where they bore most of the costs, with limited access to tournament revenue, but on the understanding this could be made up by the new programme.
The aim was that every city would make around $25-30m from this, through a total of 10 Host City deals per city, but most cities are currently nowhere close to either target due to how restrictive Fifa’s own sponsorships are….
As one example, Philadelphia explored a $5m deal with local convenience store chain, Wawa, but the company’s sale of food was considered a breach of Fifa’s exclusivity agreement with McDonald’s.
Yep, FIFA, in the most FIFA-y way possible, told North American host cities that bearing all the World Cup costs while getting no direct World Cup revenue (not even sales taxes!) would be fine, because they could sell their own sponsorships — but then made it nearly impossible to find sponsors because FIFA’s own sponsors had locked up almost all of the market categories. The Independent reports that some cities have resorted to approaching “local dry cleaners and mechanics,” which is not likely to get them up to $25-30 million apiece in sponsorship revenue.
How much of a hole will this leave host cities in? The Independent says that the 11 U.S. host cities are facing “a collective shortfall of at least $250m.” However, the paper also claims that a requested $625 million in federal funding — FIFA Peace Prize winner Donald Trump hasn’t committed to it yet — would provide “an average of $56.8m [which] won’t come close to meeting costs,” implying that either it’s a $250 million loss per city or that whoever was editing this part of the Independent story didn’t read the “collective shortfall” piece. Earlier reports had the per-city costs as in the $100-200 million range, so the truth is likely lost in the fog of FIFA war.
This is par for the course for sports mega-events: Nobody knows how much exactly the Olympics cost, either, even in years when the host city doesn’t literally set fire to its ledgers. But whether it’s city taxpayers or federal taxpayers who end up footing the bill, it’s sure not going to be FIFA, which should help make up some of the organization’s shortfall now that it’s promised to stop taking bribes, maybe.
I admit, I was somewhat upset when my home city, Chicago, declined to get involved in hosting the World Cup seeing as they hosted the first game back in 1994. But now realizing getting in bed with the most corrupt organization possible isn’t working out for other cities, I’m counting my blessings.
Also, it is really hard to figure out how anyone should be losing money here other than through plain greed. US cities should be uniquely qualified to host a World Cup at a profit. There’s no need to build stadium or other infrastructure with the glut of modern 70K+ capacity stadiums in major cities capable of handling thousands of additional tourists for a couple weeks
A rare Lori Lightfoot W to recognize a very bad deal and tell FIFA to pound sand.
It was actually Rham Emanual who nixed it. He pretty much nailed exactly what would happen: “FIFA could not provide a basic level of certainty on some major unknowns that put our city and taxpayers at risk,….The uncertainty for taxpayers, coupled with FIFA’s inflexibility and unwillingness to negotiate, were clear indications that further pursuit of the bid wasn’t in Chicago’s best interests.”
Was it that long ago? Well in that case, Rare Rahm W, then.
In any case, Soldier Field is hosting the US send-off match against Germany a few days before the World Cup begins.
So Chicago still gets to enjoy some World Cup festivities and soccer without having to deal with FIFA’s extortion.
But now realizing getting in bed with the most corrupt organization possible isn’t working out for other cities, I’m counting my blessings.
The IOC would like to have a word with you. FIFA is a close second but the IOC has had this position locked up for decades now. Formula 1 is creeping up as well with the demands they’re making to stage a race.
Corruption and shady agreements with FIFA are more predictable than the earth’s orbit around the sun
I’m well past the point of feeling sorry for nations and cities that even go through with the process of bidding for hosting rights for FIFA events, let alone end up winning them. At this point, it’s crystal clear what it’s gonna look like when you do business with them.
Either you accept blowing tons of money on the hosting rights, at the national and municipal/regional level, on the premise that you’ll be featured prominently at the global stage — or you recognize that it’s not worth blowing tons of money on hosting games and events that you don’t truly control, and where the pros of having showdowns like Curacao-Ivory Coast are still outweighed by the cons, perhaps greatly so.
This is why by 2050 everything will be hosted in Saudi Arabia
Qatar hosted the World Cup in 8 stadiums. 6 of them had a capacity of 44-46K one at 69K and one over 88. They could easily host the World Cup in England. London has one stadium at 40, 3 between 60-63K, 1 at 82K and 1 at 90K. They also have big stadiums in Liverpool and Manchester. That’s before we look at stadiums in Scotland and Wales if you want to make it a UK-wide event. There are enough venues there that you wouldn’t need to even expand or renovate the stadiums.
Stadium sizes aren’t even in the same planet as the point being made here. The gist of this is that the cities were “promised” a pathway to recoup some of the massive sums of money they spent to prepare for the World Cup — including a lot of the non-stadium stuff — only to find out that FIFA itself had already scooped up a lot of the money from that same pathway.
It’s a classic bait-and-switch, as Neil described it. And my inkling is that absolutely none of these cities will have learned anything from this experience by the time America hosts its next World Cup.
My point is that I don’t get why the World Cup always winds up in places that have to build stadiums. Consider this:
2018 – Russia built 9 and renovated 3 others
2022 – Qatar built all 8
2030 – World Cup will have 3 new stadiums and 9 renovations
2034 – 10 new stadiums and 4 renovations
The UK, France, and Germany all have enough soccer-specific stadiums big enough to hold the hold tournament without even having to renovate them and don’t have to build anything to accommodate the tourists.
Bro. Nobody cares. If any of the countries you mentioned were willing to play by FIFA’s rules in order to get the hosting rights, they would have been named the hosts “without even having to renovate them” (never mind that some of the biggest clubs in those types of countries *have* undertaken massive rebuilds of their stadiums, or seeking one of their own).
But they’re not — and neither, frankly, should any other country be.
Qatar built a lot of those stadiums just for the world cup and they used slave labor to do it.
So, if “Teddy’s Strip Joint ™” agrees to sponsor a game or a goal line or something, does he get to keep revenues from FIFA officials who attend his place of business or must that be shipped to Geneva also?
Agree with the commenters above: Anyone who even thinks of doing business with FIFA or the IOC deserves everything they get.
The sad part is that the officials who make these decisions don’t pay the price, the run of the mill taxpayers do.
I’ve said for years that FIFA was the only organization that could teach the IOC a thing or two about graft and corruption. And vice versa.
So with the World Cup, Olympics, stadiums, etc. there seems to be a dearth of even basic financial/economic literacy involved in the decisions. Certainly every major city can find qualified people to review these proposals, so I can only assume it’s largely intentional by elected officials.