A Pricey Pitch: FIFA World Cup Stadiums
Hosting FIFA’s World Cup is a spendy endeavor. Qatar spent an estimated $220 billion (USD) to host in 2022, which is roughly what China spent on its military last year.
The figure above is a little misleading since Qatar is such an outlier. If we exclude Qatar from the analysis, we get a better picture of what World Cup spending looks like from 1994-2018.
FIFA has very strict guidelines for football stadiums, which means countries usually promise to build new ones or significantly renovate old ones.
The interactive map below shows the cost of the 117 football stadiums that hosted a World Cup match between 1986 and 2022. The price is in 2021 U.S. dollars; the larger the circle, the more expensive the stadium. [Note: estimates on construction and renovation costs vary, and this was a quick and dirty data-gathering operation. I am working on validating the numbers used here, but until that time, treat these figures with a grain of salt.]
The 2026 World Cup will be held in North America. No new stadiums will be built, which hasn’t happened since the U.S. hosted in 1994. However, many stadiums will have to be renovated, and those renovations can run in the hundreds of millions. For instance:
Toronto will spend around $290 million to renovate BMO Field.
Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA, was already undergoing a $225 million renovation; the World Cup will likely increase that price tag.
$50 million is already earmarked for renovations to Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium.
Most NFL stadiums—e.g., AT&T, SoFi, MetLife, Lincoln Financial Field—will have to increase the size of their fields, which likely means taking out seats.
Although stadium renovations are expensive, the total price tag for the 2026 World Cup will likely be the lowest in 30 years because:
No new stadiums need to be built.
The World Cup will be played in big cities with modern stadiums and sufficient infrastructure.
For the first time, the World Cup is spread out among three countries—the U.S., Canada, and Mexico—which increases the potential host cities and diffuses the cost.
It may surprise you to learn that hosting the World Cup and Olympic Games is usually a money-loser (although not for FIFA, which reported earning $7.5 billion from the 2022 World Cup and anticipates raking in a cool $11 billion in 2026). But the 2026 World Cup might be different. Not only are costs likely to be lower, but profits will likely increase because there are more matches, and more fans can see these matches. As the figure below shows, the collective capacity for North American stadiums is over 1 million, yet far more fans can attend because of multiple matches played in these stadiums. Simply put, 2026 should shatter the record attendance at a World Cup.
In future posts, we’ll dive deeper into the politics of hosting mega sporting events and building stadiums, including a look at corruption in FIFA bidding process, how some countries use the World Cup to “sportswash” their image, and the folly of developing and middle-income countries spending billions on stadiums while many of their citizens can barely make ends meet. But for now, just reflect upon the fact that since 1986, approximately $25 billion has been spent on football stadiums to accommodate over 7 million World Cup fans. Now compare that with the reported $220 billion that Qatar spent on the World Cup and ask yourself: what the heck did they spend their money on? Six billion soccer balls?
