The start of the men’s World Cup is now just five weeks away, and we’re getting to the point where it may be time to ask what happens if the world’s richest country holds one of the world’s biggest sporting events and nobody shows up:
With only six weeks to go before the start of the World Cup, hotels at most of the cities hosting the tournament are facing a major problem: Bookings are running far below what they had expected.
For some metro areas such as Kansas City, bookings are running even below what a typical June or July would bring, according to an industry survey released on Monday by the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
Mega-events like the World Cup are always a risky proposition for host nations, which take on tons of added costs in the hopes of raking in spending from international visitors, something that doesn’t generally work out that well. But this year’s tournament, split among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, has been especially disastrous and especially for the U.S., marked by sky-high ticket prices, host cities jacking up train fares by more than 1000% to try to cover their costs (and fans threatening to walk to games along highway shoulders in response), and growing signs that fans from other countries who might normally travel to see their teams are planning to sit this World Cup out amid both soaring prices and fears of harassment by Trump administration immigration agencies.
All this won’t necessarily add up to the spectacle of international soccer teams playing before acres of empty seats: FIFA can always dump unsold tickets by lowering prices, though so far it’s showing no interest in doing so. But it’s looking more and more like a large share of the attendees will be locals, which cuts into any hoped-for economic windfall from hosting the cup, since those people would be spending money in their home towns regardless.
While some of these problems are specific to this particular World Cup — we haven’t even gotten into the issue of soaring airfares in the wake of Trump’s war with Iran — some are more a matter of ongoing FIFA money grubbing and of the high costs of putting on sports mega-events, which is why study after study shows things like the World Cup or the Olympics are not a very good way to create economic growth. In the worst-case scenario, residents of host cities will all skip town during the World Cup to avoid the traffic and transit nightmares (New Yorkers are already being instructed to work from home on match days), while tourists steer clear because of high prices and ICE fears, leading to a situation where nobody will go to the World Cup because it’s too crowded. In the best … it’ll look good on TV, and maybe that’s all anyone cares about?
Scottish fans have rented school buses and the majority of them seem to be staying in Providence instead of “host city” Boston. All very funny.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2026-05-01/scottish-soccer-fans-aim-to-skirt-world-cup-train-costs-by-hiring-fleet-of-school-buses
A major beef I have with the World Cup 2026 is the cities they selected (ie agreed to FIFA’s demands) are terrible summer vacation destinations. Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta are awful. Kansas City and Miami are 50/50 whether the weather is tolerable. Santa Clara is the worst profesional football stadium in the country. The Boston and New York stadiums are inaccessible. The Midwest not having any matches is a travesty but respect to Chicago for not putting up with FIFA BS.
When you say “FIFAs demands” are you saying these are the cities FIFA wanted or that these were the only cities that were willing to accept the demands made?
FIFA had requirements that host cities needed to comply with. You’re seeing it with cities forced to pay for security, transportation/stadium upgrades etc etc
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6775690/2025/11/06/world-cup-2026-trump-sponsors/
Chicago got crap for it but did the right thing when it told FIFA no we’re not doing that.
Just making sure I understood your point correctly.
Yes, and they typically demand that most local levies or tourist taxes are suspended as well – it cuts into their vig… or at least they believe it limits what they can charge for tickets. Just as they ‘suspend’ forcibly all existing naming rights agreements or sundry other contracts that the local venues may have.
I hope the lack of sales is a sign that they have finally throttled the golden goose, but time will tell. It doesn’t really matter to THEM if all the tickets are sold at a discount to locals, it hurts the tourism business, but not FIFA…
“Summer vacation destinations”. ?!? I’ve seen dumb comments but this takes the cake.
Houston/dallas/atlanta are awful places to choose to visit in the summer. Just hot and gross. Kansas City had an unbearable heatwave last summer. Ultimately you have to leave these stadiums and spend time outdoors. These cities are terrible places to host these events.
Most cities in the Midwest aren’t obvious summer vacation destinations either, and if anything, it betrays a broader truth that the US itself has fewer “fun cities” than people think, especially the year-round ones.
Imo more than a few of the World Cup host cities are very growth-conscious places — especially the Sun Belt ones — and in comparison to older, more established Midwestern cities with static (or even declining) population patterns, they would have been far more content to just write off whatever losses they took on this event in exchange for even greater name recognition abroad, if not validation as a rising global metropolis.
Not saying they were all smart or correct in doing this, necessarily, but that tends to be the mindset in these types of places. And sometimes, they even say it out loud.
Let’s keep it 100. Any other country currently, or even historically, behaving the way Uncle Sam has been behaving would be — and indeed have been — judged to be guilty of “sportswashing” in the days, weeks, months, and years leading up to major global sporting events like these. But because we’re (still) considered a “Western democracy,” those condemnations haven’t followed this particular World Cup in the same way that Russia’s and Qatar’s did, and that Saudi Arabia’s eventually will.
Not really, because nobody in the US is ignoring what’s going on, and we have a free press rather than a state run one.
There will likely be plenty of articles as well about cities “cleaning up” for FIFA or rolling out the red carpet for FIFA while not doing the same for their own citizens or even for other events.
I was thinking about World Cup 2026 last week while watching “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage.” High prices. High heat. Young fans. This World Cup is going to end up in flames isn’t it.
Oh, I hadn’t even considered that. This World Cup may be a nightmare, but the eventual Netflix documentary about it is going to be fire.
“World Cup 26, Kicks, tackles and anarchy in the USA.” Now streaming on Parahuluflix.
And available free* for a limited time with a GoldPrime+ lifetime membership!!!
I think you mean “fyre”
Are the games in Canada and Mexico having similar problems, or are they mostly going according to plan?
Games featuring the host countries are really expensive on the secondary market. Games featuring other matchups much less so, although there’s not as many marquee nations playing in Mexico or Canada.
I think fans from countries like Czechia are priced out and there’s very few Czechia type fans in North America to take their place.
Ads need the hype man from The Simpsons: “This match will determine once and for all which nation is the greatest on Earth – Mexico or Portugal!”
Similar complaints about the sky-high prices. Not sure what’s going on with hotel bookings, haven’t seen any reporting:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/05/americas/mexico-world-cup-ticket-prices-intl-latam
In Canada, it’s called a gongshow.
I’m not sure what the Mexican idiom is.
So FIFA President Gianni Infantino says the world cup is the equivalent of 104 Super Bowls? No FIFA Peace Prize for you.
Not defending FIFA, et. al. but I wonder if hotels in KC lowered their prices if they’d see more demand. Check out prices on any travel site for hotels in KC during the World Cup and you will see they are extremely high. I know some people (U.S. citizens from out of state) who have tickets for KC matches but waiting on booking a hotel to see if the prices go down to something close to realistic.
They will lower prices if they need to to fill rooms, but that is kind of the same problem, right? They don’t exist to have a full house, they exist to make money, and they expected (and were told by host committees that they would) to make more money than they are likely to make.
Yup. The issue isn’t that nobody wants to go see the World Cup — lots of people would like to in theory, including me. It’s that between the, uh, aspirational pricing and the ICE thing, FIFA seems to have found a way to make soccer diehards turn up their nose at its marquee event, which is an impressive feat. And because all the economic windfall numbers were based on those crazy prices, they’re likely to turn out to be even more illusory than usual.
Someone on social media said they thought “omnishambles” was going too far, but I think it’s within reach here.
Multishambles
Seattle’s hotels are generally higher in the summer anyway do to the Cruise Season to Alaska. I haven’t seen much of a rate change. Locals are leaving town to get away from this messy trap of FIFA & ICE swarming around the Pioneer Square and SODO neighborhoods of Lumen Field.
From the “You Don’t Say?” Desk:
World Cup hotel bookings short of expectations in Texas amid anti-U.S. sentiment abroad — The Texas Tribune, May 6, 2026.
FIFA, the governing body for international soccer, canceled hotel block reservations in Dallas and Arlington earlier this year and a recent survey of hoteliers in Houston and the Dallas area found anticipated demand is not translating into strong hotel bookings less than 40 days from the start of the tournament.
Expensive ticket prices, trouble getting travel visas and anti-American sentiment amid ongoing geopolitical uncertainty may all be contributing to the underwhelming demand for stays during the tournament, said Brent DeRaad, president and CEO of the Arlington Convention & Visitors Bureau.
The U.S. was the only major nation to register a decline in tourism in 2025, and officials are worried that trend could carry through to the World Cup.
“Hotels across host markets have spent years preparing for the World Cup, and while there is real excitement, the data points to a more nuanced outlook,” Rosanna Maietta, President & CEO of American Hotel and Lodging Association, said in a statement.
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/05/06/texas-world-cup-tourists-economic-impact/