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≡ FIFA WORLD CUP 2026 ≡
After 39 days and 104 matches at 16 sites, the 2026 FIFA World Cup is finally over, and, happily, the team with the best defense was the clear winner. Spain shut down the two brightest scoring stars of the tournament – France’s Kylian Mbappe and Argentina’s Lionel Messi – in consecutive matches to win their second World Cup title and second in the last four.
But there was a lot more to this event, which will be seen as a turning point for football – good or bad – into the future. A look at the top 10 lessons from the second World Cup held in the U.S., both of which were record breakers. Let’s start with nos. 10 to 6:
● 10: FIFA needs a better jeweler
The 2026 World Cup will be remembered for the American touches which FIFA brought into the tournament, one of which was the creation of championship rings for the winning team (30 of those), and 1,996 to be sold to fans for $12,000 each.
Championship rings started in baseball with the 1922 New York Giants as a memento following their World Series win and became a regular feature with the 1931 St. Louis Cardinals. Today, the standard is the NFL Super Bowl ring and by that standard, FIFA has a lot of catching up to do:
The Kansas City Chiefs, the Super Bowl LVIII winners (2024), created a ring with Minnesota-based Jostens with 505 round diamonds, 19 baguette diamonds, five marquise diamonds and 38 red rubies.
FIFA? Not close: “18k yellow gold, 89 pavé diamonds and 36 sapphires, made by a Swiss-based manufacturer.” Surely, with $15 billion in revenue from the tournament, FIFA could have done better, at least for the rings given to the team members. All they had to do was call Jostens (I have; they’re great.)
● 9. Cape Verde validated the 48-team format
Tiny Cape Verde, with 491,233 people as of 2021, was the proof that FIFA was looking for in justifying the expansion of the tournament to 48 teams … beyond its search for money.
Not expected to do much at all, Cape Verde – and especially keeper Vozinha – fought Spain to a 0-0 draw in its opening match, tied Uruguay 2-2 and tied with Saudi Arabia, 0-0. That was good enough to move on to the elimination round as the second-place team in Group H, and it took mighty Argentina extra time to advance with a 3-2 win.
Of the 16 teams which did not advance to the round-of-32 – the size of the 2022 tournament in Qatar – three were from Europe, seven were from Asia, three from CONCACAF and one from Africa, one from South America and one from Oceania.
Asia clearly underachieved in the tournament but nine of the 10 African teams advanced to the round-of-32, a great success for them.
● 8. What about those hydration breaks?
This was enormous hand-wringing in advance of the tournament about hot weather in the open-air venues, especially in the U.S. and Mexico. And there were many steamy matches, with high humidity, and even the iconic England-Mexico round-of-16 match had to be delayed for an hour to let a thunderstorm pass through Mexico City.
So, FIFA instituted “hydration breaks” in the middle of each half, to be three minutes in length, with the time added on during stoppage. These worked and had three impacts worth noting.
First, it did help the players participating in hot and humid conditions, no question, and from a player-safety perspective – on which FIFA is constantly criticized – this worked well. Cramping was not eliminated, but it was reduced.
Second, it created a significant opportunity for coaches to make game-plan changes in the middle of a half, rather than waiting for the end of the period. Momentum shifted in match after match as tactics were changed, especially during the group stage.
Finally, the breaks presented a multi-million dollar opportunity for commercial sales, especially by Fox, the U.S. broadcaster, which was estimated to take in as much as $300 million in added sales thanks to the break. It will be hard for FIFA to say no to huge amounts of added rights fees from the U.S. broadcasters in the future for the 2030 World Cup in Morocco, Spain and Portugal and into the future, at least as long as Gianni Infantino (SUI) is in charge.
For purists, the imposition of any break in each half is horrific. But for those who appreciate in-game strategic and tactical adjustments, this was a revelation and a reason – beyond player safety – to keep a break going forward.
● 7. Was 2026 the best it will be for U.S. television?
No doubt, the 2026 World Cup was a bonanza for Fox’s English-language coverage and Telemundo in Spanish. The two combined for a 50.1 million audience for the U.S.-Belgium round-of-16 matches and the semifinals – without the U.S. – averaged 15.09 million on Fox and 10.6 million on Telemundo (and Peacock) for a 25.69 million total for the two games.
Because the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was moved to the winter and was during the NFL season, Fox paid a reported $485 million for the 2026 rights in 2015 – three years before the Canada-Mexico-U.S. bid was selected in 2018 – as a discounted rate from FIFA, to avoid possible litigation over the date change.
The result was a North American World Cup and a fabulous gift to Fox especially. It certainly won’t be the same for the new rights sales for 2030 and beyond. One estimate circulated during the tournament suggested that FIFA will try to combine the English and Spanish-language rights in the U.S. into a single package, with a sale price of $1.5 to $2.0 billion per edition.
Disney (ABC/ESPN), Fox, Netflix and YouTube are all suggested as interested.
But 2030 and beyond are going to be different. The U.S. matches were gigantic, as were those featuring Mexico. However, during the group stage – which is where 72 of the 104 matches took place – audiences (including for the U.S. and Mexico games) averaged 5.05 million on Fox and 4.6 million on Telemundo for a 9.65 million total on average.
That’s in optimum placement times for both teams. Come 2030, it is hardly certain that the U.S. and Mexico will receive protected group placements as they did this time. And the times at which those teams will play in Morocco or Portugal or Spain are certainly not guaranteed to be favorable to U.S. broadcasters, no matter how much they pay. And the timings are likely to be worse in Saudi for 2034!
Will it be worth it? Will the U.S. men even get out of their group(s)? The finance staffs at the interested U.S. broadcasters are already crunching the numbers.
● 6. FIFA can thank the NFL for its 2026 success
Let’s be clear: the 2026 FIFA World Cup does not come to the U.S., Mexico and Canada if not for the magnificent, in-place venues already in place thanks primarily to the National Football League.
There were 11 sites in the U.S. – all NFL stadiums – plus three existing Mexican venues and two in Canada, both of which also host Canadian Football League teams.
The benefits are many: no new construction, existing operations teams already in place, existing broadcast support and concessions and restrooms and security and all the rest.
The tournament worked and while there were glitches – there always are – the tournament set the expected record for attendance at 6,810,966 or 65,490 per match. That surpassed the much smaller 1994 World Cup, the only prior one held in the U.S., which totaled 3,587,538 spectators.
What is amazing, however, is that the 24-team, 52-match 1994 World Cup had a larger – and still record – game average attendance of 68,991!
In that event, nine venues were used instead of 16; all were in the U.S. and five were NFL venues of the time and four were college football sites, including the then-94,194 capacity Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, far larger than any of the 2026 sites.
FIFA’s efforts in the build-up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup looked to the NFL especially for every possible way to extract money from attending fans, something which the NFL is exceptionally good at. The difference, which has not been lost on fans, is that the NFL is a for-profit business. FIFA is a non-profit association, at least legally.
And before soccer fans get fired up about catching up to the NFL, it’s worth noting that FIFA’s gigantic $15 million revenue haul from the once-every-four-years tournament is far away from the NFL’s annual revenue of $23 billion in its 2024-25 fiscal year. And it’s going up.
Next: lessons no. 5 to no. 1.
Rich Perelman
Editor
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