The U.S. Men’s National Team is now extremely out of the World Cup, joining co-hosts Canada and Mexico on the sidelines, but North America still has two more weeks of the sweet, sweet international tourism that comes with hosting the tournament. Or, you know, not:
As Toronto’s official FIFA World Cup 2026 hosting duties come to an end, data shows that the city saw little economic gain during the first two weeks of the tournament…
Data from payment processing company Moneris between June 12 and 26 — the first two weeks of the World Cup in Toronto — showed that debit and credit card spending at restaurants and bars in the city rose by just three per cent compared with the same time last year.
A 3% increase isn’t actually terrible in a city the size of Toronto, which can swallow 40,000 or so soccer fans without much noticing. The bigger problem, notes the CBC, is that Toronto taxpayers spent about $380 million on hosting six World Cup matches, which is tough to earn back one debit card charge at a time.
In Texas, meanwhile, the news site Border Report interviewed our old frenemy, sports economist Andy Zimbalist, and learned that “events like the World Cup generate little or no net economic benefit because FIFA keeps most event revenue while host cities absorb major expenses.” Then the site ran this under the whiplash-inducing headline “Impact of World Cup in Texas goes beyond the dollars and cents,” because Zimbalist said the games were maybe “worth it because there was so much togetherness.”
But anyway, who are you going to believe, some pointy-headed bean counter or a respected international sports business entity? Philadelphia’s 6abc digital staff doesn’t need any “experts” or “numbers” when it can just reprint the official press release:
With the final match at the Philadelphia Stadium in the books, FIFA is releasing new details about the World Cup impact locally.
More than 409,000 people attended the six matches — five of which were sold-out. …
Fans consumed 290,000 beers and more than 55,000 hot dogs.
After each match day, any food from the stadium that was not consumed was given to local food banks, totaling 15,000 pounds of food.
Getting 15,000 pounds of leftover food for a mere $380 million — who can put a price on that? Other than $380 million, sure, but that’s the bean-counter way of looking at things, whereas if you count up all the actual unused beans … I’ll see myself out.
It would be interesting to compare Toronto’s economic impact from the world cup to a similar sized city that isn’t actually hosting. Per this article, Chicago restaurants have been packed to watch games. All of this at no additional cost to the taxpayer.
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/restaurants/ccb-world-cup-watch-parties-chicago-20260626/
Yep, that seems a ready-made comparison study. I have to email Victor Matheson today anyway, let me see if he knows if anyone has attempted this.
The comparison will be very interesting.
Chicago opted to host alternate events such as Pokémon in June which seem to be bringing in just as much tourism but at a fraction of the cost
Hotel bookings during the World Cup have been comparable to a Taylor Swift concert at times.
My preliminary impression is that Chicago is having a stronger Summer tourism season than most other host cities.
So expect lots of spicy arguments about the value of advertising.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/06/25/choose-chicago-tourism/
I looked where FIFA got its “facts”. One source is Tourism Economics, who is very good. They got the job to show that the Titans needed a new stadium with somebody else paying for it, and even more impressively, convinced Orlando that Camping World needed improvements paid for by someone else.
Convo with accountant friend:
“People say we’re bean counters.”
“Somebody’s gotta count the beans!”
“True, but I tell them we’re not counting, we’re accounting.”
Dammit, just realized I missed my chance to go with the headline “World Cup economic studies have more holes than the USMNT defense.”
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the esteemed Andy Zimbalist revealing that the World Cup really IS just the friends we made along the way.
Well, we have made new friends, people who saw a different America and different Americans than they had been lead to believe. That’s worth something. Whether it’s worth all that spending is another question.
One thing they’re raving about is the stadiums. Great, I am glad they had a good time, and I felt almost churlish in a few Facebook posts when I mentioned who actually paid for them.
So, Moneris says overall card payments increased by 3% in the greater Toronto area (or wherever). If 10% of that 3% goes back to public coffers in the form of fees or local taxes (and, please remember, FIFA likes to insist on local taxes being suspended during it’s tournaments… though I don’t know whether this has happened for host cities in 2026) it should only take a total increase in local spending of $125 Bn or so for the government(s) involved to make back the total cost of hosting the six games.
BTW, Toronto’s operating budget for 2025 was just under $19Bn.
Gonna guess that didn’t happen.
Oh, well. It won’t be another 32 years (probably) before the World Cup comes to these shores again, but it will be enough time from now that ( a ) people will have forgotten how the economics didn’t work and ( b ) there won’t be any games in South Florida because South Florida will be underwater.
With the money they made this time, FIFA will do everything it can to get back here soon. Probably going to an every year, or every other year World Cup, like they threatened in the past, in direct competition with UEFA
The 2030 edition is happening across continents and confederations: Europe, Africa, and South America. The 2034 edition is happening in Saudi Arabia, which eliminates all of Asia. That leaves only one option for 2038; the only question is whether it’ll be another multi-nation bid, or whether the US goes it on its own.
It was in the news recently that Denver was asked about hosting but declined because the state and city governments didn’t want to put up millions of dollars for the “privilege” of hosting the games with no support from FIFA.
If that’s true, it makes me proud to be a new Denver resident!
Absolutely, Matt. There were a number of cities that expressed interest in hosting games up front. Several found that the deal was incredibly bad and dropped out along the way.
Hosting FIFA or IOC events is a little like Global Thermonuclear War.
The only way to win is not to play.
Montreal is another city that said no after seeing the financial burden they would have to bear to meet FIFA’s long list of demands for host cities.
Similar findings in Seattle:
‘They had hyped us up so much’: Seattle businesses near World Cup stadium report declining sales
The city’s tourism board estimated 750,000 visitors would visit over the course of the World Cup
Read in The Guardian: https://apple.news/AxRhhdAXmQUiet0x9pW1lkA
I went downtown for the US-AUS game and the US-Belgium disappointment yesterday. Gameday mayhem for sure. Bars with TVs were doing well and I met a few people who had travelled to Seattle just for the activities. But I am not surprised that other non-bar businesses suffered.
Yeah, those look to be the same mixed reports out of Seattle that were covered a week ago Friday:
“food outlets near the stadium that sell drinks or quick grab-and-go food items are doing great while businesses farther away or those that sell things fans may not crave before or after a soccer match (Vietnamese cookies, vintage clothing) are having a miserable time of it”
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2026/06/26/24401/friday-roundup-pelicans-owner-seeks-deal-for-state-funded-velour-ballot-measure-on-royals-stadium-could-face-court-fight/
So to add to this, Toronto normally has a lot of tourists in June anyway. So a lot of the tourists we normally get didn’t show up, and as a result, hotel occupancy was lower during the first 2 weeks of the world cup than last year. However, hotel rates were higher, and the Municipal Accommodation Tax was raised for the period, so we’ll have to wait until the receipts come in, and we’ll have to see if the tourists that normally come in June wind up coming in July and August.
What Zimbalist said about so-called “togetherness” does hit on my hypothesis that making nothing but vibes-based arguments for sports/stadiums while completely disregarding the cost-benefit analysis could actually work in certain contexts (namely, in certain cities). It might not necessarily be Toronto, but for other cities with inferiority complexes and/or a desperation to be seen as “big time” by the rest of the country and the world — *cough Orlando cough* — making sales pitches entirely around that premise and essentially saying, “This is the price we have to pay if we want to be a ‘premier’ city” might not be the dumbest play… especially if enough residents also share the same desperation as the local governments.
That’s really just a long way of saying, “It’s more of a Shelbyville idea,” no?
It’s not an issue in places like NYC or LA, whose status as alpha-plus cities are secure forever and who will get these types of events in their backyards simply by the virtue of existing. For smaller cities that sometimes define themselves by the things they’re not orby the things they *don’t* have, the equation is different, sometimes vastly so.
Not saying this is right or smart, but you just have to live in one of these towns to truly understand what it is.
I think in Toronto, there was a case of FOMO if there were no matches in the city, and the whole tournament was in the US. Some people are still ticked off about losing the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta and then again in 2008. There is a whole “why can’t we have nice things” thing going on here.
However, yes, you can’t quantify everything. Having big events like sports tournaments, big concerts, etc., does make a metro area a better place to live and work. Not everything in life can be quantified and decided on a spreadsheet.
Actually, there are ways to try to quantify the value of externalities that don’t show up as budget items — how much it’s worth it to local residents to have more sports, basically. The sports don’t come out well:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1465-7287.2000.tb00005.x
Neil, went to read the article at the link you posted but it’s a “paywall”. Can you briefly summarize it for us? Thanks.
The study authors employed methods used for valuing other things that don’t have monetary value (clean water, say) to determine how much people feel sports teams are worth to their communities — how much other stuff they would give up to keep the teams, basically. The answer wasn’t zero, but it was only about 10-15% of what cities were spending on building stadiums and arenas for them.
Victor Matheson discusses it some here, search for “CVM”:
https://media.clemson.edu/economics/data/sports/Stadiums%20and%20Econ%20Impact/Matheson-2019-Journal_of_Policy_Analysis_and_Management.pdf
What was the reason behind adding Canada and Mexico to the bid? I assumed it was to secure votes. And once you’ve added Canada to the tournament, you almost have to be in Toronto, since nearly 20% of Canada lives in the Greater Toronto Area.