FIFA Collects, Cities Pay: The 2026 World Cup Ledger
Published on July 30th, 2026Written By: Dave Manuel
The 2026 World Cup ended on July 19 at MetLife Stadium, and across sixteen city finance departments the arithmetic began. It is a harder sum than it should be. FIFA is expected to clear around $11 billion from the tournament, and for the first time in the competition's history it ran the event itself - no local organising committee, dealing directly with host cities, keeping the media rights, the sponsorship, the ticketing, the hospitality and the merchandise. The cities kept the costs: security, stadium retrofits, transport, fan festivals. Six host-city agreements pried loose by the Houston Chronicle confirm that cities receive no share of tickets, concessions, merchandise or parking. Los Angeles is projected to have spent close to $594 million. Toronto budgeted $380 million and British Columbia $578 million, both in Canadian dollars. And there is still no complete public ledger for the tournament, because several host committees have never disclosed their spending or released their contracts at all. This file audits what is known, what is partially known, and what has been withheld - because in this story the blanks are the finding.
Sports-King Feature
The World Cup Bill
Sixteen host cities, one month of football, and a ledger that will never be complete. What was paid, what was withheld, and what actually came back.
Host City Financial Summary · Consolidated · Response to Records RequestTOURNAMENT .... FIFA WORLD CUP 2026HOST CITIES ... 16 ACROSS THREE COUNTRIES
FIFA REVENUE .. ABOUT $11,000,000,000
CITY SHARE OF TICKETS ..... NONE
CITY SHARE OF MERCHANDISE . NONE
CITY SHARE OF CONCESSIONS . NONE
CITY SHARE OF PARKING ..... NONE
TOTAL PUBLIC COST .........Several host committees have not disclosed spending or released contracts. A complete consolidated figure does not exist.
FIFA Expected Revenue$11B
Los Angeles Projected Spend$594M
US Cities Shortfall$250M+
Of Last 14 World Cups, Net Losses12
Start with the structural change, because it explains everything else. For most of the tournament's history a World Cup was run by a local organising committee that absorbed the costs and shared in the upside. In 2026 that arrangement was gone. FIFA operated the tournament in-house and contracted directly with host cities, retaining essentially all revenue - broadcast, sponsorship, ticketing, hospitality, merchandise - while the cities and states whose names were on the marquee carried the operational bill. Fortune described the result as a franchise model in which the franchisees pay to operate the business and the franchisor keeps the receipts. Alan Rothenberg, who ran US Soccer when America last hosted in 1994 and sat on the Los Angeles committee this time, called the agreement very, very one-sided. He has grounds for comparison: in 1994, host cities took a slice of game-day revenue and US Soccer covered security costs, and the cities came out ahead. This file works city by city through what the 2026 edition actually cost, using published budgets and disclosed grants where they exist - and marking the redactions plainly where they do not.
01
Exhibit A · Host City Agreement · Six Obtained by the Houston ChronicleFIFA RETAINS .. MEDIA, SPONSORSHIP, TICKETING,HOSPITALITY, MERCHANDISE
CITY PROVIDES . SECURITY, STADIUM RETROFIT,
TRANSPORT, FAN FESTIVAL, TAX RELIEF
CITY REVENUE .. HOST CITY SUPPORTER PROGRAMME ONLYTarget was $25M to $30M per city across ten sponsor deals. Most cities finished nowhere near it.
The commercial trap inside the agreement was the part nobody photographed. FIFA scrapped the old local organising committee model and replaced the cities' revenue with something called the Host City Supporter programme - a sponsorship scheme FIFA designed and whose rules FIFA set. Each city was meant to raise $25 million to $30 million from roughly ten deals. The problem was that FIFA's own global sponsorship categories were so broad that almost every valuable local partner was off-limits: a city could not sign a convenience store chain, because food conflicted with McDonald's. Sources described cities reduced to pitching local dry cleaners and mechanics. The eleven American host cities ended up facing a collective shortfall of at least $250 million. This is the mechanism behind every number that follows. The costs were fixed by contract; the revenue was theoretical.
02
Host City · Los Angeles · SoFi Stadium · 8 MatchesPROJECTED SPEND ABOUT $594,000,000COVERS ........ PUBLIC SAFETY, TRANSPORT,
STAFFING, INFRASTRUCTURE
MATCH PARKING . UP TO $250, DEAREST IN THE EVENT
CITY SHARE OF THAT PARKINGRothenberg, who ran the 1994 tournament, sat on this committee and called the terms very, very one-sided.
Los Angeles hosted eight matches at SoFi Stadium including a quarter-final, and is projected to have spent close to $594 million once public safety, transportation, staffing and infrastructure are counted - the largest single-city figure in the tournament. The detail that captures the arrangement best is the parking. Fans paid up to $250 a car at SoFi, the steepest in the competition, and not a cent of that flowed to the city that paid for the policing around it. Rothenberg's verdict carries weight precisely because he is not a critic from outside: he ran the 1994 tournament, he sat on this host committee, and his own read was that the people looking at Chicago - which walked away during the bidding - had begun to conclude that Chicago was the smart one.
03
Host City · New York / New Jersey · MetLife Stadium · FinalCOMBINED SPEND ABOUT $500,000,000NJ TRANSIT GAP $48,000,000
RESPONSE ...... FARE INCREASES ON MATCH DAYS
FIFA CONTRIBUTION TO GAP ..Senator Schumer called the fare hikes a ripoff, plain and simple, and demanded FIFA cover the shortfall.
The region that staged the final is expected to have spent around $500 million between the two states. The sharpest fight was over transport: NJ Transit faced a $48 million shortfall after federal and host-committee contributions and responded by raising fares on match days, which drew a public demand from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that FIFA cover the gap. FIFA, unusually, pushed back in public - noting that the 2022 tournament in Qatar had provided free public transit and warning that a $150 fare would have a chilling effect on fans. The exchange was revealing in both directions. A transit agency serving the biggest match in the sport could not fund the service the match required, and the organisation collecting the tournament's revenue argued about fares rather than paying them. The city comptroller had already run the sum that matters: even if FIFA's projection of 1.2 million regional visitors had fully materialised, the resulting $55 million in additional tax revenue would have been wiped out by roughly $70 million in municipal costs for policing, emergency management and local support. On the organisers' own best case, New York was fifteen million dollars down. The visitors did not fully materialise either - the Hotel Association of New York City reported bookings up by at most ten per cent, with nearly half of hotels seeing no additional business at all, and more than $100 million in anticipated room revenue missed.
04
Host Province · British Columbia · Vancouver · 7 MatchesPROVINCIAL PLAN $578,000,000 CADIN US DOLLARS . ROUGHLY $420,000,000
FEDERAL GRANT . $116,000,000 CAD (2024)
ADDITIONAL FED $100,000,000 CAD SECURITYAll Canadian figures are in Canadian dollars. Federal spending was planned at $473 million CAD across both host cities.
British Columbia holds the largest openly published public commitment in Canada: $578 million Canadian - roughly $420 million US, which places it behind Los Angeles and the New York region once the currencies are put on the same footing - against federal grants of $116 million announced in 2024 and a further $100 million in security money transferred later. Vancouver had originally declined to bid, withdrew over FIFA's demands, and then returned - and the cost profile is exactly what the sceptics predicted, having climbed steadily from the figures floated at bid time. Canada's federal government planned $473 million in total World Cup expenditure across the two Canadian cities, of which only $96 million had actually been spent as of January 2026, which tells you how heavily the spending was loaded into the final months.
05
Host City · Toronto · BMO Field · 6 MatchesCOUNCIL BUDGET $380,000,000 CADIN US DOLLARS . ROUGHLY $275,000,000
2018 BID ESTIMATE $30M TO $45M CAD
ESCALATION .... ABOUT TENFOLD IN EIGHT YEARSCard spending at Toronto restaurants and bars rose 3 per cent during the tournament's first two weeks.
When Toronto bid in 2018, the estimated cost to city taxpayers was between $30 million and $45 million. The council-approved budget became $380 million Canadian - roughly $275 million US - an escalation of about tenfold across eight years, supported by federal and Ontario grants. The city's public position throughout was that it was meeting its host obligations while supporting benefits for residents and businesses, which is the standard formulation. Then the data arrived. Card spending at restaurants and bars across Toronto during the first two weeks of the tournament rose just three per cent against the same fortnight a year earlier, against a FIFA-commissioned study that had suggested the city might see $940 million in economic benefit. What Toronto physically has to show for the money is a temporary capacity expansion at BMO Field that was dismantled once the tournament left. This is the pattern across the file. Retrofits for a World Cup are frequently not legacy infrastructure at all - they are month-long rentals installed at permanent-construction prices.
06
Host Cities · Kansas City · SeattleKC SECURITY GAP $59,000,000SEATTLE RETROFIT $47,000,000 AT LUMEN FIELD
SEATTLE TOTAL .
KC TOTAL ......Both cities are small markets by tournament standards carrying big-market obligations.
Kansas City spent much of the build-up wrestling with a $59 million security funding gap, and Seattle spent $47 million converting Lumen Field for the tournament - a figure that buys a playing surface, sightline changes and broadcast infrastructure that mostly comes out again afterwards. Neither city has published a consolidated total. That absence matters more in the mid-size markets than the large ones, because these are the cities for whom the arithmetic is tightest: a $59 million hole in Kansas City is a materially different proposition from the same hole in Los Angeles, and it is precisely where a complete public ledger would be most useful.
07
Host City · Boston · Gillette Stadium, FoxboroughPUBLIC SAFETY . ABOUT $7,800,000PAID BY ....... BOSTON SOCCER 2026
BACKED BY ..... KRAFT SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
LOCAL TAXPAYER CONTRIBUTION REFUSEDThe only host city in the file where residents declined the bill and it stuck.
Foxborough produced the outcome every other host city might study. Local officials needed roughly $7.8 million for public safety around Gillette Stadium, local taxpayers refused to fund it, and the money was raised instead by the host committee with financial backing from the stadium's owners. The sum is small relative to Los Angeles or Vancouver, and Massachusetts hosted fewer matches - but the principle is the one this whole file circles. The costs of hosting are not laws of physics. They are the result of who has the leverage and the willingness to say no. Boston said no, and the bill went to a private party with a direct commercial interest in the stadium being used.
08
Host City · Houston · NRG StadiumFEDERAL GRANT . $64,676,165PROGRAMME ..... FIFA WORLD CUP GRANT PROGRAM
ADMINISTERED BY FEMA / DHS
STATE SUPPORT . MAJOR EVENTS REIMBURSEMENT PROGRAM
CITY TOTAL ....Part of a $625 million federal security programme covering all eleven US host cities.
Houston is the rare entry with a figure precise to the dollar, because a senator announced it: $64,676,165 in federal security money, drawn from the $625 million Washington set aside across the eleven American host cities. Texas also leaned on its Major Events Reimbursement Program, a state fund established in 1999 when the state was chasing the Olympics, which means Texas taxpayers subsidised the tournament twice over - once federally and once at state level. What Houston has not published is its own total. That is the shape of American disclosure in this tournament: the federal grants are announced with press releases, and the municipal spending underneath them is not.
09
Host City · San Francisco Bay Area · Levi's StadiumCOMMITTEE SPENDHOST AGREEMENT
PUBLIC COST ...
MATCH PARKING . SOLD OUT EXCEPT ADA
CITY REVENUE SHARE ........ NONEThe absence of disclosure is the most complete finding available for this host city.
The Bay Area committee has not publicly disclosed its spending, and no host agreement has been released. That is the entry. There is no scandal alleged here and none implied - simply the observation that a public tournament played in a publicly policed region has produced no public accounting, and that this was a choice somebody made. It is also not unique: across sixteen host cities, most have published nothing resembling a full reckoning, which is why no complete tournament-wide figure exists and probably never will. Journalists obtained six agreements by prising them out through records requests. The other ten remain where they started.
10
Non-Host City · Chicago · Withdrew During BiddingMATCHES HOSTED 0PUBLIC COST ... $0
REVENUE FOREGONE HOST CITY SUPPORTER SHARE
REASON ........ TERMS OF THE FIFA AGREEMENTIncreasingly cited by people inside the tournament as the correct decision.
Chicago walked away during the bidding, citing the terms FIFA was asking cities to accept, and spent the summer of 2026 watching. Montreal did the same on the Canadian side, running the numbers and deciding the costs did not work. Together they are the control group this file would otherwise lack: major cities with suitable stadiums and large soccer populations that simply declined. The cost of that decision was a month of attention it did not receive and whatever indirect spending came with it. The benefit was every number in the nine entries above. Rothenberg's observation, from inside the Los Angeles committee, was that people had started looking at Chicago and concluding Chicago was the smart one - and Chicago did not have to publish a ledger to prove it.
11
This file would be dishonest if it only counted outflows, so here is the return, measured rather than promised. Bank of America's card data showed consumer spending across the sixteen host cities up 6.3 per cent year on year, driven by a 16.7 per cent surge in spending by non-local visitors - real money, transaction-level, not a projection. Hotels filled, restaurants filled, and rideshare drivers had the month of their lives. But set that against what was forecast. Pre-tournament studies claimed up to $40.9 billion in GDP impact and $160 million to $620 million per US host city; FIFA's own 2025 study projected $17.2 billion in American economic activity and 185,000 jobs, most of them temporary. The realised benefit landed at roughly half the most optimistic projections. And the broader record is not kind. Research from the University of Toronto - the work of Tyeshia Redden, an assistant professor of urban planning there - finds that twelve of the last fourteen World Cups produced net economic losses for their host regions. The most cited academic study of the last American tournament is blunter still: in a 2004 paper in Regional Studies, economists Robert Baade and Victor Matheson examined the 1994 World Cup after the fact and concluded that host cities had suffered cumulative losses of $5.5 billion to $9.3 billion, against the $4 billion gain that boosters had promised beforehand. Not a shortfall against a forecast - a loss where a profit was advertised. Something real came back in 2026. It was smaller than the brochure, and it did not arrive in the same account that paid the bill.
The Ledger
All sixteen host cities and the two that walked. Canadian figures are shown in Canadian dollars with a US-dollar equivalent, because ranking them against American budgets without converting would overstate them by roughly a third. The disclosure column is the point: Published means a full budget or spend figure is in the public record, Partial means only a component - a grant, a retrofit, a gap - has been disclosed, and Withheld means no meaningful figure has been released.
| Host City | Country | Venue | Public Figure | Disclosure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | USA | SoFi Stadium | ~$594M projected | Published |
| New York / New Jersey | USA | MetLife Stadium | ~$500M combined | Published |
| British Columbia | Canada | BC Place | $578M CAD (~$420M US) | Published |
| Toronto | Canada | BMO Field | $380M CAD (~$275M US) | Published |
| Houston | USA | NRG Stadium | $64.68M federal grant | Partial |
| Kansas City | USA | Arrowhead Stadium | $59M security gap | Partial |
| Seattle | USA | Lumen Field | $47M retrofit | Partial |
| Boston | USA | Gillette Stadium | $7.8M, privately funded | Partial |
| Miami | USA | Hard Rock Stadium | Sought $70M federal | Partial |
| Dallas | USA | AT&T Stadium | State programme support | Withheld |
| Atlanta | USA | Mercedes-Benz Stadium | Federal grant only | Withheld |
| Philadelphia | USA | Lincoln Financial Field | Federal grant only | Withheld |
| San Francisco Bay Area | USA | Levi's Stadium | Nothing released | Withheld |
| Mexico City | Mexico | Estadio Azteca | Not published | Withheld |
| Guadalajara | Mexico | Estadio Akron | Not published | Withheld |
| Monterrey | Mexico | Estadio BBVA | Not published | Withheld |
| Chicago and Montreal - declined | USA / Canada | None | $0 | N/A |
The Arithmetic
Two ledgers - what FIFA kept, what cities carried
Not an interpretation - a summary of the contracts. Six host-city agreements obtained through records requests confirm cities received no share of tickets, concessions, merchandise or parking.
Disclosed public cost, by host jurisdiction - converted to US dollars
The chart cannot be completed, and that is the finding. Only four jurisdictions have published anything resembling a total; several have published nothing at all.
The Record Book
The Bid That Promised OtherwiseThe North American United Bid presentation sold the tournament to governments partly on the grounds that it offered a network of modern stadiums capable of hosting the first 48-team World Cup without the need for new construction or major investment. Cities went on to spend hundreds of millions each on security, transport and temporary retrofits, and host committees hired Washington lobbying firms to chase federal money. The bid was accurate about the buildings. It was quiet about everything that happens around them.
The Money That Nearly Did Not ArriveMonths before kick-off, roughly $900 million designated for the eleven US host cities had not reached them amid a partial federal government shutdown, and a House Homeland Security Committee hearing was told the consequences for security preparation could be catastrophic. The chief operating officer of the Miami host committee said publicly that without $70 million by the end of March, the city might have to cancel its fan festival. The matches were never in doubt. Everything the cities had been told would generate their return was.
What the Fans PaidTicket prices started between $400 and $675 on FIFA's own platform and ran from roughly $1,500 to nearly $5,000 on resale. Parking ranged from $99 in Atlanta to $250 in Los Angeles. Hotel rates ran from about $205 a night in Houston to $611 in Boston, and in Mexican host cities rates spiked by close to 1,000 per cent. Atlanta, alone among the venues, held its concessions at $2 hot dogs and $5 beers. None of the ticketing, parking or concession revenue was shared with the cities providing the policing.
The Comparison Nobody WantedThe United States hosted in 1994 under an entirely different arrangement: host cities took a share of game-day revenue and US Soccer covered security, and the cities finished ahead. Los Angeles alone generated a reported $623 million that summer, and New York, Boston and San Francisco collectively cleared a billion. The tournament in 2026 was bigger, longer and richer than 1994 by every measure. The terms offered to the cities staging it were worse.
Sports-King's Note
Now for the fine printWhat this file can and cannot claim. There is no consolidated public accounting of the 2026 World Cup, so nothing here should be read as a tournament-wide total - the ledger above deliberately marks each host city as Published, Partial or Withheld rather than filling gaps with estimates. Figures used: FIFA revenue of approximately $11 billion is the widely reported projection for the cycle, with some outlets citing a range up to $14 billion; the structural change to FIFA running the tournament in-house without a local organising committee, and the resulting allocation of revenue and costs, follows reporting by Fortune and others; the six host-city agreements establishing that cities receive no share of ticketing, concessions, merchandise or parking were obtained by the Houston Chronicle through records requests; Alan Rothenberg's characterisation of the terms, and his 1994 comparison, are his own on-the-record remarks. City figures: Los Angeles at approximately $594 million and New York/New Jersey at approximately $500 million are projections reported by Politico and others, which also placed most US host cities between $100 million and $200 million; Toronto's $380 million is a council-approved budget and British Columbia's $578 million a provincial spending plan, both per the Parliamentary Budget Officer, alongside planned federal expenditure of $473 million of which $96 million had been spent as of January 2026; Houston's $64,676,165 federal grant was announced by Senator John Cornyn under the FEMA-administered FIFA World Cup Grant Program, part of $625 million allocated across the eleven US host cities; Kansas City's $59 million security gap, Seattle's $47 million Lumen Field retrofit, the $48 million NJ Transit shortfall and Foxborough's roughly $7.8 million privately funded public-safety cost are as reported. The at-least-$250 million collective shortfall across US host cities, and the Host City Supporter programme's $25-30 million per-city target, follow reporting by The Independent. Returns: Bank of America card-spending data showing a 6.3 per cent rise across host cities and a 16.7 per cent rise among non-local visitors is the most concrete realised measure available and is used in preference to projections; pre-tournament forecasts of up to $40.9 billion in GDP, $160-620 million per US host city, and FIFA's own 2025 projection of $17.2 billion and 185,000 largely temporary US jobs are labelled as forecasts throughout. The University of Toronto finding that twelve of the last fourteen World Cups produced net economic losses for host regions is the work of Tyeshia Redden, an assistant professor of urban planning, and has been cited across Fortune, Newsweek, CBC and CP24. The Baade and Matheson figures come from their 2004 Regional Studies paper on the economic impact of the World Cup, an ex post analysis of the 1994 tournament finding cumulative host-city losses of $5.5 billion to $9.3 billion against ex ante booster estimates of a $4 billion gain - stated here as losses rather than as a shortfall, which is what the paper actually says. Toronto's 2018 bid estimate of $30-45 million, the three per cent rise in restaurant and bar card spending during the tournament's first two weeks, and the FIFA-commissioned study projecting $940 million in benefit to the city are per CBC and CP24. The New York City comptroller's finding that $55 million in additional tax revenue would be outweighed by roughly $70 million in municipal costs even on FIFA's own visitor projection, and the Hotel Association of New York City's report of bookings up at most ten per cent with over $100 million in anticipated room revenue missed, are as reported. Montreal declined to host on cost grounds, as Chicago did. ProPublica repeatedly asked FIFA for event revenue details and received no response, with FIFA stating only that it expects cities to benefit. Mexican host city costs are not published in comparable form and are marked accordingly. Canadian figures are stated in Canadian dollars and converted to approximate US dollars in the ledger and chart at prevailing 2026 rates, because comparing an unconverted Canadian budget against American ones overstates it by roughly a third; the conversions are approximations and are labelled as such. Where a city has released nothing, this file says so rather than estimating - the redactions are literal, not stylistic.
One Last Word
A month of extraordinary football happened, and it was worth watching. That is not in dispute and it is not what this file measured. What it measured is that the organisation which collected the revenue was not the organisation which paid for the policing, and that most of the cities which did the paying have not told anybody how much. The tournament produced a champion, a record audience and sixteen finance departments still working on a sum they may never publish. Chicago, which never played a match, is the only host city in North America with a complete public ledger.
The hard numbers, for the road: FIFA ran the 2026 World Cup in-house for the first time in the tournament's history, retaining broadcast, sponsorship, ticketing, hospitality and merchandise revenue against an expected haul of around $11 billion, while host cities carried security, retrofits, transport and fan festivals and received no share of tickets, concessions, merchandise or parking. Los Angeles is projected to have spent close to $594 million, British Columbia $578 million, New York and New Jersey about $500 million combined, and Toronto $380 million. Washington provided $625 million in security funding across eleven US cities - Houston's share was $64,676,165 - and the American host cities still faced a collective shortfall of at least $250 million. Bank of America data showed spending across the sixteen host cities up 6.3 per cent, driven by a 16.7 per cent rise from visitors, roughly half the most optimistic forecast. Twelve of the last fourteen World Cups produced net economic losses for their host regions, and the definitive study of the 1994 American tournament found cumulative host-city losses of $5.5 to $9.3 billion against a promised $4 billion gain. And the single most complete fact available about several host cities is that they have released nothing at all.
