The 2026 World Cup has been a real moneymaker for FIFA. Revenues from TV broadcasting rights, ticket sales and other commercial sources are projected to amount to nearly US$11 billion, making it the most financially successful event in the international soccer governing body’s history.

But what about the cities that hosted the tournament’s games? Spread across Canada, the United States and Mexico, 16 cities helped make the World Cup a financial success. Moreover, images of national fans from around the globe taking over Boston, Miami and Dallas provided a backdrop to the tournament.

Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars of public money to stage the tournament, these cities receive little direct revenue from the World Cup. Instead, FIFA says it will reinvest the money in the global development of soccer – for example, by distributing funding to its 211 national member associations.

Nonetheless, staging games during the tournament would have financially benefited host cities, FIFA has claimed, mainly through job creation and tourist spending. To that end, FIFA commissioned a 2025 study that projected $30 billion in economic impact for the U.S. alone.

But reports suggesting that host cities did not experience significant increases in tourism may dampen that financial lift. Moreover, sport economists have long demonstrated that the economic impact of mega-sports events like World Cups and Olympic Games cannot offset the substantial expenditures incurred by host cities.

Social impact as a source of return

Now that the tournament is over, the question thus turns to whether host cities can realize longer-term returns from the tournament that justify their substantial investments, and if so, how.

As sport management scholars who study the impacts of........

© The Conversation