{"id":773521,"date":"2026-07-20T08:20:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T08:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/773521\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T08:20:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T08:20:21","slug":"was-the-world-cup-worth-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/773521\/","title":{"rendered":"Was the World Cup worth it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n It was beautiful. It was fun. It was unifying. But was the World Cup worth it for the United States?\n <\/p>\n

\n That question is typically answered in financial terms: Add up the economic benefit the games generated and subtract the amount spent to put the games on; if the number is positive, then the games were worthwhile. If it\u2019s negative, they weren\u2019t.\n <\/p>\n

\n By that measure, the World Cup was almost certainly a bust.\n <\/p>\n

\n Very little evidence supports any meaningful US financial benefit from the games: The expected jobs boom didn\u2019t happen. Hotel prices weren\u2019t meaningfully higher. The growth in retail sales was way down in June from May. Airfares were flat from May, and so was overall tourism.\n <\/p>\n

\n But measuring economic benefit is a difficult calculation \u2013 how do you separate the boost from an event as large as the World Cup from the rest of an economy as large as that of the United States? The evidence at that point becomes subjective.\n <\/p>\n

\n But what if the answer isn\u2019t measured in pure dollars and cents? Is there a reasonable price to pay for fun?\n <\/p>\n

\n There\u2019s no objective measure for that question \u2013 because whether a massive soccer tournament is \u201cworth it\u201d is inherently subjective.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"Fans<\/p>\n

\n Because taxpayers typically foot the bill for giant sporting events on the scale of the Olympics or the World Cup \u2013 which cost tens of billions of dollars to put on \u2013 event organizers hire fleets of economists to make their financial cases.\n <\/p>\n

\n FIFA went out of its way to show how the 2026 World Cup would benefit the United States: In a March 2025 report<\/a>, the global soccer association estimated the games would cost $13.9 billion to put on ($11.1 billon footed by the United States) and create $80.1 billon of global economic benefit, including $30.5 billion for the United States. FIFA claimed the World Cup would create the equivalent of 185,000 full-time jobs in the United States.\n <\/p>\n

\n If that boost was real, it was hard to see in the data.\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n Tourism to the United States was effectively flat in June compared to the same month last year \u2013 up just 0.2%, according to the US National Travel and Tourism Office<\/a>. Most of the gain was from Africa (up 13.8%) and South America (up 4.7%). But visits from Europeans fell 1.2%, and Asian tourism declined 5.6%.\n <\/p>\n

\n Last week\u2019s inflation report <\/a>showed less of a World Cup impact than we might have expected. Prices for hotels fell 2.8%. Airline fares barely budged. Recreation prices were up but just by 0.5%.\n <\/p>\n

\"Fans<\/p>\n

\n The June jobs report showed leisure and hospitality jobs plunged by 61,000 positions \u2013 a number so dumbfounding that economists widely expect that to get revised . The US economy also shed nearly 5,000 general merchandise retail jobs that month. So much for souvenir shopping. Some hospitality workers may have been asked to work longer hours during the games for higher pay \u2013 but that wouldn\u2019t show up meaningfully in the jobs report.\n <\/p>\n

\n Retail sales rose just 0.2% on a national level in June, below economists\u2019 expectations and down from 1% growth in May. Restaurant and bar spending was just 0.1% higher last month.\n <\/p>\n

\n Local data shows some evidence of a World Cup boost \u2013 sales at small businesses in host cities rose 4.1% in June, compared with a 1.8% gain for large cities that didn\u2019t host the games, according to Fiserv, a small business financial services company.\n <\/p>\n

\"Scotland<\/p>\n

\n Boston, with a 7.6% small business sales gain, was the biggest beneficiary, although the Federal Reserve noted that much of that was because of a huge gain in beer sales \u2013 possibly because Scotland fans drank the city dry<\/a>. But the Fed said Boston hotels initially reported bookings were below expectations during the World Cup but rose to typical levels once they offered discounted prices.\n <\/p>\n

\n Although the World cup probably boosted overall economic activity in the host cities, the games coincided with the Iran war, which raised consumer prices and sapped some demand, noted Joe Brusuelas, chief US economist for RBS. Those factors \u2013 neither particularly strong \u2013 probably negated one another, he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe macro boost from the games was not as robust as expected,\u201d said Brusuelas.\n <\/p>\n

\n Whatever economic boost the US gained from the World Cup is difficult to measure because of the long list of unknowns. For example, how much of that money would have been spent anyway, perhaps in a different place? How do you account for productivity that was upended by disrupted commutes and employees watching the games instead of working? And how do you even measure the cost of the games to start with?\n <\/p>\n

\"USA<\/p>\n

\n For example, FIFA touted the infrastructure cost of this World Cup as effectively \u201cfree,\u201d because Canada, the United States and Mexico didn\u2019t have to build any new stadiums \u2013 unlike Qatar, which spent billions of dollars to construct multiple stadiums to host its games in 2022.\n <\/p>\n

\n But taxpayers did foot the bill for those stadiums at one point, presumably with the expectation that they could be used for a wide variety of events \u2013 including potential World Cup games. How much of that cost should be accounted for?\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere are so many confounding variables and so much noise in the data,\u201d said Michael Edwards, professor of sport management at North Carolina State University. \u201cIt\u2019s really difficult to pinpoint specific gains from these events.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n We know for sure that one organization benefited: FIFA. The organization could make $9 billion on ticket sales from the event, according to Bloomberg Intelligence<\/a>. That\u2019s on top of the $1.1 billion it reportedly<\/a> earned in US TV rights from Fox and Telemundo.\n <\/p>\n

\n The stadium owners also made money on ticket sales, as did gambling companies, which took in an estimated $2.25 billion in wagers, reported Bloomberg Intelligence.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of ways to look at it, but taxpayers build the stadium and the vast majority of revenue go to team owners, FIFA, IOC, etc. and there\u2019s not much evidence these events generate broad economic benefits for a city,\u201d said Edwards.\n <\/p>\n

\n But fans benefited too. So did crowded sports bars in what\u2019s typically an off-season. Interest in soccer always peaks during the World Cup, promoting love for the sport and bringing families, friends and strangers together throughout the tournament.\n <\/p>\n

\"Norwegian<\/p>\n

\n And there\u2019s evidence soccer interest is really starting to take hold in the United States. It\u2019s now America\u2019s fourth-most popular professional sport, behind football, baseball and basketball but ahead of auto racing and hockey, according to a Gallup poll. Youth soccer and America\u2019s MLS league could get a significant boost, as they did from the 1994 event that the United States hosted.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s a unifying event \u2013 one of the few left in the isolated social media age. Americans felt a sense of national pride from the throngs of international tourists who fell in love with Walmart and ranch dressing. And in a dark time for the world, a magnificent tournament helped make the world feel a little smaller.\n <\/p>\n

\n That\u2019s why Edwards says he\u2019s not an opponent of taxpayer-funded sports events. Just because the economic benefit for cities isn\u2019t clear, that doesn\u2019t mean hosting an event like the World Cup is a bad idea.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cStrictly from a financial standpoint there\u2019s very little evidence these events pay for themselves, but that doesn\u2019t mean they shouldn\u2019t be built. There are other benefits that are nonfinancial,\u201d he said. \u201cThere needs to be a bigger conversation about what benefits we actually get versus the largely mythical claims about economic benefits.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was beautiful. It was fun. It was unifying. But was the World Cup worth it for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-773521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}