The World Cup Will Be a Party for Canada — But Not a Cash Cow

On June 11, the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup will get underway here in North America, bringing with it billions of dollars in presumed economic impact via packed stadiums, giant sponsorship deals, and fully-booked hotels. Culturally, this is North America’s biggest soccer moment in decades. But, as authors Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski revealed in their 2009 bestseller Soccernomics, which they’ve updated for this year’s World Cup, the tournament is a mixed bag for host cities. Kuper recently told us why.

Toronto and Vancouver have each spent hundreds of millions of dollars to host World Cup matches, and the feds chipped in another $473 million to help. Is that a good investment?

It doesn’t pay off financially. Many studies have shown that hosting has no lasting effect on tourism, jobs, or foreign investment. The fans who travel often just stay a night, because it’s expensive and they’re not in Vancouver to see Vancouver. At the same time, tourists who would normally visit Toronto or Vancouver skip out, thinking, Well, I won’t go because prices will be higher, hotels will be full, security will be a hassle. And FIFA takes almost all the money. They get the TV rights, the sponsorship rights, even the match tickets, and they try to stop any city putting sales tax on tickets.

So what's the benefit to hosting games? Studies show an increase in happiness. Even lonely people get welcomed into the national conversations. There’s actually a fall in suicides in countries that participate in World Cups. You don’t throw a party because you think it’s going to make you rich. You throw a party to have a good time. This year ticket prices are the highest in World Cup history, with finals tickets going for nearly US$11,000 face value. Prices have fallen recently on the secondary market, but there are still thousands of unsold tickets. Did FIFA misread the market?

To create a sense of scarcity, FIFA didn’t initially put all the tickets up for sale. It was quite an amateurish attempt to starve the market to encourage people to buy at high prices. [But] I saw a Cape Verde/Saudi Arabia ticket today for $7.

For decades, FIFA has sold the World Cup partly on the idea that soccer is uninterrupted. But this year for the first time, FIFA is allowing commercials during water breaks. Why? FIFA does various youth World Cups, and it does the Women’s World Cup. But the Men’s World Cup is its only really lucrative property, so this is their money for the next four years. They’re hoping to get about US$11 billion, which they’ll funnel down to the national federations, which in 2027 will vote on whether to keep FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, in power. That’s the promise FIFA makes: we give you the money, then you vote for the president. So the commercial breaks? The voters love it. Soccernomics debuted nearly two decades ago. Looking back, what did you get right in the first edition and what did you whiff?

Hosting doesn’t pay off; we got that right. What we got wrong is we thought that Western European countries with small populations would not keep winning and that wealthier countries with bigger populations would start winning. That hasn’t happened. With the exception of Messi's Argentina, we still see the Western Europeans remain dominant.

Written By

Ian Frisch