Preparations are underway for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Sixteen cities across North America will host its matches, and tickets are already on sale or, by this point, sold out. Missouri’s Department of Revenue caught our attention the other day when it reminded fans that it won’t charge sales tax on tickets for the World Cup matches played in Kansas City.
Missouri hasn’t published an exact estimate of how much revenue this will cost them, but a reasonable guess is around $1.9 million per game – funds that otherwise would support public education, health care, and other public services. With six matches set to be held at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium, over $11 million in state and local revenue could be lost.
This is unusual. Missouri and its local governments collect sales taxes on every other sporting event in Kansas City. Ticket sales for the National Football League’s Chiefs and Major League Baseball’s Royals, for example, generate $13 million every year for Kansas City and another $5 million for Jackson County, with more for state coffers.
It’s worth noting that this unusual new tax break is not for fans of the Chiefs and Royals, but rather for fans of whatever international soccer teams get assigned to Kansas City.
Missouri, it turns out, is not alone. Every city hosting World Cup games will exempt sales tax from ticket prices. The state of Florida will lose around $7.4 million on games played in Miami, and Georgia expects to lose up to $25 million in state and local sales taxes on World Cup games played in Atlanta. These estimates exclude tickets re-sold – often at much higher prices – through FIFA’s official marketplace that will also be tax-free.
But Missouri, Georgia, Florida, and other host states aren’t giving tax breaks to World Cup fans out of the goodness of their hearts. Instead, FIFA demanded these sales tax breaks as a price to play ball.
Frankly, sales and excise taxes aren’t a great way to collect revenue, as they usually tend to hit low-income families the hardest. With ticket prices in the hundreds and even thousands of dollars, however, World Cup tax breaks will more likely benefit fans with higher incomes. More importantly, state and local governments rely on sales and excise taxes to fund our schools, roads, health care, and other services. When we have sales taxes, they should equally apply to all types of consumer purchases, avoiding lots of special-interest carveouts – especially not favoring one company over another.
But that’s not how FIFA likes to do things.
Unfortunately, tens of millions of dollars in lost sales tax revenue is just the tip of the iceberg. To host part of the tournament and reap its economic rewards, each city is expected to shoulder between $100 to $200 million in costs related to infrastructure, security, and logistics. FIFA also requires host cities to provide them with office space equipped with state-of-the-art amenities, free of charge.
FIFA justifies these high costs and lofty demands with the promise of economic returns. It says North American cities will receive a huge influx of tourists eager to spend their money on hotels, restaurants, and other parts of the local economy which will make up for the lost revenues.
Other countries’ experiences are less convincing. Twelve of the last 14 World Cups hosted since 1966 have resulted in financial losses for host countries. With losses ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, the last three World Cups have an average return on investment of negative 31 percent.
At least one city is turning to outside funds to help bridge the gap. The Santa Clara City Council is partnering with the Bay Area Host Committee, a nonprofit organization of local sports teams and businesses, that will assume expenses related to its stadium, security, and logistics.
Other cities decided the winning move was not to play. Chicago, the third-largest U.S. city, chose not to host World Cup games because city officials said it would leave the city in debt. Instead, Chicago launched its own campaign inviting Cup fans to visit, hoping to gain tourism revenue without tournament headaches.
Communities need publicly funded services like education and infrastructure to thrive much more than they need soccer games. Prospects for future World Cups might want to give a little more scrutiny to whether such an economic undertaking is worth the loss of revenue. FIFA won’t change its behavior without more big-name cities like Chicago pushing back. And though FIFA maintains that these requirements are all part of what it means “to be a good host,” it must be asked, when you’re the most powerful sporting body in the world: “What does it mean to be a good guest?”
