The North American delegation has won the right to lose a whole lot of money putting on a soccer tournament.
ESPN (“2026 World Cup coming to U.S., Mexico, Canada as joint bid wins vote“):
The United States might not be participating in the World Cup, but it pulled off a historic victory in Russia all the same: The globe’s biggest sporting event is returning to the U.S.
In a long-anticipated vote on Wednesday, the joint bid of the U.S., Mexico and Canada defeated Morocco, its only challenger, as 200 national soccer federations cast their ballots to cap FIFA’s annual Congress.
The three-nation bid captured 134 votes, with Morocco earning 65 from the panel and only Iran choosing neither option. Cuba, Slovenia and Spain (whose delegation was in Krasnodar, Russia, handling its coaching situation) abstained.
“This is an incredible, and incredibly important, moment for soccer in North America and beyond,” said Carlos Cordeiro, the president of U.S. Soccer.
The 2026 tournament will feature an expanded field of 48 teams — the current field has 32 — and will mark the first time in FIFA’s history that a three-nation bid has been awarded the showpiece event.
The joint bid’s plans call for 60 of the 80 games to be played in the United States — including all matches from the quarterfinals onward — while Canada and Mexico host 10 apiece. The final is expected to be played at MetLife Stadium, just outside New York.
The winnowing process was bizarre, even by FIFA standards. While it has made epic progress over the past quarter-century or so, Morocco doesn’t have anything like the infrastructure to support a massive international event. It has been reported that “Nine of the 14 stadiums included in Morocco’s bid were yet to be built, while the remaining five required ‘significant renovation or upgrading.’”
The combined North America bad is interesting, in that, put together, the three companies have the airports, stadia, hotels, and other assets to host the World Cup already in place. That’s better than having a relatively poor country having to spend massive amounts of money for what would essentially be one-time-use venues. Still, it’s going to cost big money to put on the event and the system is rigged such that FIFA gets most of the proceeds of the tournament.
At last report, the cost of staging this year’s cup in Russia is in the ballpark of $12 billion. A 2014 report by Dennis Coates, a past president of the North American Association of Sports Economists, declares,
Over the years, a wide array of independent academic researchers have examined previous World Cups, Olympics, and Super Bowls, so-called “mega- events”, and found no evidence that the benefits promised by event organizers have ever materialized. Evidence concerning the 1994 World Cup hosted in the US is especially pertinent. While the consulting firm for the 1994 Bid Committee, which just happens to be known today as AECOM, predicted benefits of $4 billion for the 1994 competition, analysis after the fact found that the “the average host city experienced a reduction in income of $712 million relative to predictions” for “an overall negative impact on the host city economies of $9.26 billion.” This means that the initial estimate overshot the mark by more than $13 billion dollars.
To be fair, there is one area where large economic benefits will likely accrue, however not to average Americans. Historically, the clear economic beneficiaries of World Cups have been international and national soccer organizations, such as FIFA, Major League Soccer, and the U.S. Soccer Federation, which are leading and represented on the Bid Committee.
The upside isn’t immediately obvious. Soccer is simply never going to be even a top three spectator sport in the United States and maybe not even in Canada. And it’s not like either country needs the prestige that comes with hosting; they’re already global leaders.
