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≡ WORLD CUP PLANNING PAINS ≡
In a lengthy story posted Sunday titled, “US cities confront FIFA over World Cup costs,” Politico‘s Sophia Cai reviewed the obligations and constraints placed on the 11 communities in the U.S. where 2026 FIFA World Cup matches will be played, with the recurrent theme sounded by Santa Clara, California mayor Lisa Gillmor:
“There’s a little bit coming in, but certainly there is not enough to cover our cost. It’s a tall task to take on.”
FIFA has changed the way the World Cup is organized for 2026, dispensing with in-country organizing committees altogether, in favor of FIFA itself staging the tournament and collecting all of the revenues available for itself.
This will have the effect of enormously increasing FIFA’s take, from $7.57 billion in the 2019-22 quadrennial to a projected $13.0 billion for 2023-26, with FIFA staff and hundreds of short-term hires working out of new FIFA offices in Coral Gables, Florida.
All of the broadcast rights, sponsorship, hospitality, ticketing, licensing and merchandising and other revenue goes directly to FIFA now. On the other hand, communities in which the matches will be held are responsible, as part of the bid process and according to host-city agreements, to provide:
● Competition facility enhancements to FIFA’s standards
● Community security and policing
● Fan festivals, set to accommodate up to 15,000 at a time
All are counting on massive tourism to boost hotel, restaurant, transportation and other visitor spending to provide a tax bonanza to pay for all of this. And the story underlines the worries over where the money will come from in 2026.
Some are turning to higher accommodations occupancy taxes, some want state financial assistance, such as Texas’ Major Events Reimbursement Program Fund. Others want to cut back. Cai wrote:
“Nowhere is the situation as tense as in California, where the state’s refusal to deliver more funding to two venues due to its own budget problems has driven the Los Angeles organizers to consider their own watch parties beyond FIFA’s control. The international federation countered with threats to deny public viewing licenses if the host committee deviates from its preferred format.”
Matches there include six at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara and eight at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, just east of Los Angeles International Airport.
The U.S. Congress appropriated $625 million in security support costs for the 2026 World Cup, which will no doubt include reimbursements to local law enforcement agencies in World Cup host communities.
But not for field modifications or local fan entertainment or transportation support programs.
Further, FIFA’s own commercial program crowds out nearly all corporate sponsorship opportunities for local host committees. So the revenue and the costs do not even up. So the fan festivals – typically free in the past and a favorite of television cameras whenever a goal is scored – look like the first casualty.
This could simply end up being a reduction of festival days to when matches are played in a host community, although FIFA wants the sites to operate for all days of the tournament (which will apparently be the case in the two Canadian and three Mexican host cities). Or tickets could be sold for the fan fests to try recoup some of the local investments, especially in infrastructure, security and production costs.
The Los Angeles host committee has plans for a FIFA Fan Festival, but also “regional watch events” that would cover more of Los Angeles County.
The Politico report said local community costs could be from $100-200 million each, depending on the number of matches to be played, and a FIFA official, speaking without being identified, said, “It’s a partnership. No one wants them to fail.” According to the story, fan fests in Dallas, Houston, New York/New Jersey and Philadelphia will run throughout the tournament. Elsewhere? Not clear yet.
¶
The fight over these issues in Los Angeles has significant implications for the 2028 Olympic Games as well.
While FIFA owns and operates its World Cup, the International Olympic Committee owns the Olympic Games and has maintained the independent, in-city organizing committee model, with the rapidly-growing LA28 group in place for 2028.
While the LA28 team has focused on the competition sites and putting together the Olympic Village at UCLA, it has been working to save money and ensure that the event is staged at no cost to the City of Los Angeles, which is under heavy financial pressures, and is the guarantor of the first $270 million in deficit and all amounts about $540 million.
Last week, LA28 won easy approval from the City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, for moving the diving events from the LA84 Foundation/John C. Argue Swim Stadium next to the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, to the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena. The clincher was (1) the move will provide a net financial benefit to LA28 of $17.6 million, and (2) LA28 committed to spending $2-3 million of this to widen the existing Swim Stadium so that it can host national and international competitions in the future.
L.A. City Council members have wailed about the need for fan festivals so that “everyone can experience” the 2028 Games. But producing those events is on the City, not LA28, and the IOC’s own commercial needs, as well as those of LA28, will also severely constrain the ability of the City of Los Angeles to obtain commercial sponsors (although private donors seem to be allowed).
At the 1984 Olympic Games, the spread-out nature of the event and the parallel need to ensure there was no deficit – the City of Los Angeles was not involved in any financial guarantees – limited not-ticketed fan support to one main location: Exposition Park, operated by the L.A. Olympic Organizing Committee, at its expense.
The site of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (ceremonies and track and field) and the Los Angeles Sports Arena (torn down, now BMO Stadium), Expo Park had a broad, open-air expanse suitable for free activities, including entertainment stages that offered 127 performances across the 16 days of the Games – during non-competition hours – exhibits, food stalls, souvenir stands and a heavy decorative scheme, with five giant scaffold towers, rows of sonotubes and valances for shade and more than 400 concrete benches (some of which are still in service today).
Operations ran from 7 a.m. to past 10 p.m., with extensive public information kiosks supporting 10 languages, telephone banks (in pre-mobile phone days) and 400 restrooms throughout the park. Daily use was as high as 150,000, primarily Olympic event spectators, but with thousands of others simply visiting.
The desires of the City Council for 2028 are far larger, with Council members asking the City to put up festival or watch-party sites in all 15 Council districts. But who will pay for this?
It’s worthwhile to note that the tug-of-war between U.S. cities and FIFA will not end in 2026, as the U.S. will be the primary host for the 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup, another month-long extravaganza that will raise the same issues.
¶
FIFA President Gianni Infantino (SUI) is getting an earful about the 2026 World Cup, but also from outside the U.S. At a briefing for reporters in Nairobi (KEN), on Saturday (30th), Infantino was told:
● “African football fans are a little bit jittery about what is happening in the U.S. in regards to the expansion of [the number of] people who are in the U.S.”
● “I think the onus is on you to make sure that Africa and all the other people of the world do not feel outcast, do not feel like they are being made second-class citizens in a world where equality should prevail.”
Infantino replied, “Everyone will be welcome in North America next year for the World Cup. I think it’s important to clarify this, there is a lot of misconception out there.”
The outcome will be seen and heard in less than a year.
Rich Perelman
Editor
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