In February 2024, it was announced that 16 cities in North America, including Santa Clara’s Levi Stadium, home to the San Francisco 49ers, would host six games for the 2026 World Cup. But hosting games for the World Cup is quite costly. Brazil almost went bankrupt after spending $12 billion on now-unused stadiums for their World Cup hosting duties in 2014. Furthermore, over the last few years, big sporting events in Santa Clara promised “big economic payoff(s)”, such as the Super Bowl and America’s Cup, yet neither brought nor created any new money or financial impact.
Today, other cities hosting the 2026 World Cup are seeing their costs rise to alarming levels. Vancouver has seen their World Cup budget double. This means costs for them could reach up to $600 million. Toronto officials initially told the public that it would cost them between $30 million-$60 million. Now the budget for Toronto is slightly below $400 million. The city of Miami, usually budgets $10 million whenever a Super Bowl comes to town, has requested roughly $60M for preparation of their World Cup games. Considering how expensive the tickets will be for all the games, I would have thought that the cities would be making billions off the games.
However, none of this has stopped these hosting cities from claiming that they will still somehow defy the laws of economics and make billions off their hosting duties:
Dallas expects to make $2 billion.
New Jersey’s governor believes that estimates claiming that they will see $2 billion in economic impact is “understating it”. Why stop there? Maybe they will see $4 billion? $10 trillion?
Seattle believes their financial windfall will be “at a minimum of $929M”…so a little below $1B. Which is odd considering in 2022, they claimed that Seattle could make $100M off the 2026 world cup games. That is a big jump.
Los Angeles is not as optimistic and claims that it will make $600M.
Atlanta says it will bring in a little over $500M.
Missouri and Kansas see their impact at around $630M.
Back to San Francisco. Last week, the San Francisco 49ers publicly vowed to cover Santa Clara’s expenses for the World Cup games. The 49ers claimed that they would use money that they received from their NFL operations to cover the costs. One estimate claims that it will cost Santa Clara about $50M to stage the games. The San Francisco Chronicle did a story on the Santa Clara City Attorney privately acknowledging to the City Council that “Santa Clara would lose approximately $38 million from the FIFA games”.
Keep in mind that the public in Santa Clara and San Francisco has been told next to nothing about local expenses for hosting the World Cup games. It was kept so secret that even some Santa Clara City Council members were not allowed to look at financial documents given to the city by FIFA. The mayor of Santa Clara told the San Francisco Chronicle weeks ago that “she has not yet seen agreements for the World Cup”.
But let’s be careful whether the 49ers will actually pay for much, if anything at all. The mayor has tried to remind the public that the 49ers promised to only cover all “approved costs”. That can be interpreted many ways, considering the terrible history between the 49ers and the mayor. SantaClaraNews.org brings up a good point on this issue: What happens if the team doesn’t pay all the costs? Should taxpayers trust a team who promised in 2010 to build youth soccer fields yet built VIP parking instead? Or a team that repeatedly pledged during stadium negotiations to pay their fair share of taxes yet, even today, they pay almost none?
Let’s look at the setup of everything involved with the games coming to San Francisco. The Santa Clara City Council, most of whom have literally been given millions of dollars by the 49ers, agreed recently to hand over the financial duties of the World Cup games to a nonprofit (started and run by the 49ers) called the Bay Area Host Committee. This means that this nonprofit is taking over “all obligations, which includes event costs, public safety costs and stadium improvements”. The 49ers also pledged to be a “financial backstop if the nonprofit sports group can’t pay”.
Except, there are so many ways for the 49ers to get out of this promise:
First, there are questions about whether this agreed is legally allowed due to the 2010 ballot initiative called Measure J. This protects Santa Clara taxpayers from their general fund being raided for stadium-related expenses. The mayor mentioned this recently but was shot down by the same City Council members whom the 49ers gave millions to during election season.
Second, this nonprofit wants the city to pay for a “suite and 52 tickets”. Nothing sketchy about that.
Third, this entire agreement is terribly written and confusing. The way that the agreement defines a qualified cost is vague. Considering how important that it is to get that fact correct, it shouldn’t be difficult to see that the 49ers did this intentionally. Is it any wonder that the 49ers made it an “odyssey” just to get these documents? The City Attorney admitted publicly that this agreement was put together to allow for “as little misunderstanding as possible”.
Fourth, guess who decides what is and isn’t a qualified cost? The non-profit, i.e., the 49ers, since the agreement states that “the host committee decides which costs to approve”. How convenient.
Fifth, the way that Santa Clara gets reimbursed is intentionally difficult.
“This reimbursement process is nothing like I’ve ever seen. It is mind-numbing. It is cumbersome, and it will paralyze our staff if we have to argue over every invoice. It will paralyze our staff. We are a small city. We can’t afford to take the time to do that” — Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor, Silicon Valley Voice, 12/11/24
As I said above, this deal was done rapidly and deliberately by the 49ers. One former city attorney noted to the council that city staff were not given “ample time” to review any of the documents. Additionally, a lot of the given documents had substantial redactions put in. If any city leader wants to see the documents in full, including the mayor, then all they have to do is sign an iron-clad non-disclosure. Absurd.
