The 2026 World Cup is on track to be the most expensive in history, with costs spiralling to levels that even the most hardened football executives describe as ‘crazy’. But behind the eye-watering price tags for stadiums and infrastructure, there is a more intimate story: the quiet displacement of communities, the hollowing out of local economies, and the peculiar social contract that forces ordinary people to pay for a spectacle they may never attend.
Consider the numbers: a conservative estimate puts the combined spending of the United States, Canada and Mexico at over £30 billion. That is more than the GDP of half the countries in Africa. The money is going to concrete and glass, to air-conditioned domes and high-speed rail links. But ask anyone in Toronto’s Exhibition Place or Los Angeles’ Inglewood neighbourhood, and they will tell you a different arithmetic. Property prices are rising beyond reach. Small businesses are being pushed out to make way for ‘fan zones’. The temporary workforce – cleaners, security, catering staff – will be bussed in from distant suburbs, paid minimum wage, and then bussed out again once the final whistle blows.
This is the paradox of the mega-event. For a fleeting month, the world’s eyes are on your city. But the people who live there are often left holding the bill. In Miami, residents have staged protests against the use of public funds for a stadium renovation that primarily benefits a private franchise. In Guadalajara, there are fears that the construction of new transport links will erase the character of historic barrios. And in Vancouver, a city still smarting from the cost overruns of the 2010 Winter Olympics, many are asking whether the economic promises ever materialised.
The answer, according to a growing body of research, is no. A study by the University of Oxford found that every World Cup since 1960 has exceeded its budget, with an average overrun of 179%. The 2014 Brazil edition was a disaster of cost and public debt, and the 2022 Qatar tournament – if you can call the migrant labour tragedy a tournament – set new lows for human exploitation. The 2026 version, with its three-nation sprawl and its dependence on corporate sponsorship, risks being a monument to all the worst excesses of modern sport.
Yet the cultural shift is happening. There is a growing restlessness among fans and non-fans alike. The old assumption that hosting a World Cup is a badge of national pride is being challenged. People are starting to ask: who is this really for? The billionaires in their skyboxes? The international TV audience? Or the local teenager who can no longer afford a ticket and watches the match in a bar that has been renamed a ‘FIFA Fan Experience’?
On the streets of the host cities, I see the signs. It is in the weary eyes of a waitress in Mexico City who knows her rent will double next year. It is in the dry laugh of a construction worker in New Jersey who is building a stadium he will never enter. It is in the quiet conversations among neighbours in Vancouver, wondering if the promised ‘legacy’ will be another empty arena or a mountain of debt.
The economics of the 2026 World Cup may be crazy, but the human cost is all too real. And in the end, that is the story that matters. Not the multi-billion-dollar figures, but the small, quiet price that ordinary people are forced to pay for the world’s greatest show.
