The Beautiful Game, the Ugly Maths: Who Is Really Winning and Losing From the 2026 World Cup

Hundreds of thousands of fans. Billions of dollars in projected spending. Sixteen host cities across three countries. The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the largest sporting event in human history — and beneath the carnival of goals and national anthems, one of the most revealing financial stories of the year is quietly unfolding.

The winners are winning spectacularly. The losers are paying the bill.

THE WINNERS

FIFA — The House Always Wins

No entity on earth profits from the World Cup quite like FIFA. The global governing body generated a record $7.6 billion from Qatar 2022 and is widely expected to shatter that figure from the expanded 48-team tournament in 2026 — with total income across its four-year cycle approaching $13 billion. Marion Laboure, senior strategist at Deutsche Bank Research, is unambiguous: FIFA is “without question” the main financial winner.

The source of that wealth is structural and deliberately protected. FIFA owns all central revenue streams — broadcasting rights, sponsorship deals, licensing, hospitality packages and ticket sales. Host cities receive none of it. They provide the stadiums, the security, the transport upgrades, the logistics and the public services. FIFA collects the income. It is, as ProPublica neatly summarised it, a “you do, you pay, we take” arrangement.

Sports Betting Companies

The gambling industry is having a tournament to remember. The shift from pre-match betting to in-play wagering — where bettors react in real time to what they see on the pitch — has transformed the revenue potential of a football match. Chad Beynon, an analyst at Macquarie, describes the change: where fans once placed a single bet before kickoff and then simply watched, they now bet continuously throughout the ninety minutes, adjusting and reacting with every chance, every substitution, every red card. Across 104 matches in 2026, that is an enormous and growing revenue pool for the industry.

Hotels, Airlines and Hospitality Near Stadiums

Businesses in the immediate vicinity of host stadiums are among the clearest short-term winners. In Philadelphia alone — where matches are being played at Lincoln Financial Field — consulting firm Collier’s estimates the tournament will generate approximately $770 million in economic impact, describing it as the single largest financial boost from one event in the city’s history. Hotels and short-term rental platforms in host cities have recorded record bookings and pricing power for match days and the days surrounding them. Airlines connecting the sixteen host cities across the United States, Canada and Mexico have similarly benefited from the surge in travel demand.

Scotland — the Unlikely Hospitality Champions

In a detail that has delighted observers, Scotland’s fans — who have followed their team to the United States in enormous numbers despite the team’s modest World Cup history — have become a cultural and economic phenomenon. Reports from Boston, where Scotland played their group matches, describe the Scottish supporters drinking the city dry, filling bars and restaurants, charming locals and spending freely. Boston’s mayor publicly declared the city’s love for the Tartan Army. What Scotland may lack in trophies, their fans are more than compensating for in hospitality receipts.

THE LOSERS

Host Cities — Carrying the Cost

The economic case for hosting the World Cup has always been more seductive in the boardroom than in the audit. Independent economists are increasingly blunt about the gap between the promises and the reality.

Each host city can expect to spend well over $100 million on security, transport, staging and infrastructure alone — none of which is reimbursed by FIFA. An academic study analysing decades of Olympics and World Cups found that more than four in five events ran a deficit, with host cities more often losing money than profiting. Alexander Budzier, a fellow at Oxford University and CEO of Oxford Global Projects, argues that long-term economic benefits from mega sporting events simply do not materialise in most cases. Rather than attracting additional tourists, host cities typically see a drop in regular visitors who actively avoid the crowds, the disruption and the inflated prices.

FIFA projected that the 2026 tournament would add $41 billion to the global economy, including $17 billion to the United States alone, with 185,000 jobs created. Professor Michael Edwards of NC State University and other independent economists urge heavy caution with such figures, noting that impact studies commissioned to support bids routinely use assumptions that independent analysts do not accept — counting total spending while overlooking public costs and the spending that would have occurred regardless of the tournament.

Taxpayers

The public ultimately carries the risk. Infrastructure upgrades that host cities undertook to meet FIFA’s requirements — transit systems, road improvements, stadium renovations — were largely funded by public money. Observers in Toronto and Vancouver, two Canadian host cities, noted a bittersweet irony: the maintenance and repairs their cities desperately needed for years were finally completed, but only because a global sporting event forced politicians to act. As one Canadian economist observed, cities should not need a World Cup to fix their pavements.

Texas’s own post-Super Bowl analysis — a smaller but instructive comparison — found it “impossible” to determine whether taxpayers broke even, with the best available estimate suggesting a $14 million shortfall on a $22 million public investment. World Cup spending operates at a far larger scale.

Ordinary Fans

The tournament’s dynamic ticket pricing model, which adjusts prices in real time based on demand, has drawn sharp criticism for making matches unaffordable to many ordinary supporters — particularly those from lower-income countries whose national teams qualified for the first time. The system has been widely condemned for prioritising revenue extraction over the accessibility and spirit that gave the World Cup its global appeal.

THE VERDICT

The 2026 World Cup is generating unprecedented wealth — but the distribution of that wealth tells a revealing story about who has the power in global sport and who does not.

FIFA earns billions. Host cities spend hundreds of millions. Hospitality businesses near stadiums win. Regular tourists and taxpayers lose. Betting companies profit from every match. And the beautiful game — the sport itself, the reason any of this exists — remains the world’s most powerful economic engine, its rewards flowing almost entirely upward.

For the fans in the stadiums, roaring as their nations compete, the financial architecture is invisible. For the economists studying it, the numbers could not be clearer.

SOURCE BBC NEWS