The 2026 World Cup had its flaws, yes, but it was a resounding success for Fifa
In the coming days following last night’s World Cup final, Fifa will release a report on how many people watched the tournament across its five and a half weeks.
Look out for the social media KPIs – impressions, engagement, video views – that major sporting bodies now have to report, but the headline number will always be TV viewers.
For an organisation that attributes almost half its annual revenue (44 per cent) to broadcast and streaming rights for the World Cup, this is the most significant figure of all – for now, at least.
Expect a record: no World Cup has ever featured as many as 48 teams, and a final between Spain and Argentina offered a mouth-watering meeting between two of the most followed international sides on the planet. Billions will have tuned in.
Fifa will no doubt claim that the 2026 edition of its prize asset has been a resounding success. And on most metrics, it won’t be wrong.
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, though. The seemingly bulletproof Gianni Infantino faces fresh threats from Uefa, and allegations that Fifa breached its own neutrality rules by waiving a ban for USA striker Folarin Balogun after an intervention from President Trump.
Stars earn their stripes
Fifa’s partners will have been delighted by most of what’s transpired on the pitch. Has there ever been a more sensational Golden Boot race, with the game’s most marketable attackers all vying to be top scorer?
Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland, Jude Bellingham, Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe haven’t just given us a shootout for the ages, they’ve stayed firmly in the spotlight throughout – great news for the Fifa partners who’ve spent millions signing these stars as brand ambassadors.
On the pitch, we’ve had the kind of drama only a World Cup delivers: Vozinha’s clean sheet heroics against Spain, England’s dramatic win at the Azteca, Haaland’s ruthless dismantling of Brazil, all three host nations reaching new heights. The list goes on.
Everyone loves an underdog story, sure, but Fifa will have been just as pleased to see the world’s four top-ranked teams, kept apart by seeding, reach the semi-finals together for the first time in the competition’s history. The cream rose to the top, and that means more eyeballs.
Full houses, not empty threats
The biggest pre-tournament worry was ticketing, with dynamic pricing turning World Cup access into the subject of formal investigations by attorneys general in New York, New Jersey and Texas.
Those early images from Guadalajara – rows of visibly empty red seats despite an official attendance of 44,985 in a 45,664-capacity ground – looked like confirmation that fans had been priced out of their own tournament.
But it hasn’t played out that way at scale. Across the group stage, stadiums ran at a collective capacity above 99 per cent, according to Sports Illustrated’s analysis of official attendance figures.
And the pricing model that caused the initial panic also did the other half of its job: when demand for a fixture cooled, so did the price. Ticket data tracking (cited by SI) showed Argentina v Algeria prices dropping by almost a quarter in the three days before kick-off.
Fifa’s ticketing strategy will keep drawing fire on cost and accessibility grounds, and rightly so, but the mass empty-stadium spectacle that dominated the build-up simply didn’t materialise.
Wholesome, viral moments
Bringing the world together for a great party is what this tournament is meant to do, and Fifa can claim to have delivered. Qatar’s synthetic souk has made way for mass parties in Times Square, one of the most iconic locations on the planet in America’s most multicultural city.
Look beyond New York, though, and there are plenty more wholesome tales and cultural exchanges. Scotland fans charmed Boston so thoroughly that the Boston Globe penned an open love letter to the Tartan Army before their customary early flight home.
“Yes Sir, I Can Boogie” belted out by thousands of Scots at Fenway Park felt like the ultimate glitch in the Matrix. A duck named Merlin dressed in a Mexico jersey. Norway fans (real and adopted) rowing energetically but going nowhere. Even Mexico coach Javier Aguirre’s colourful touchline exchange with England’s Anthony Gordon. These were the viral moments that had everyone talking glowingly about this tournament.
Eager to distance themselves from the cultural arrogance of the current White House administration, Americans have largely embraced visiting fans.
A lazy pre-tournament framing was always whether football could finally “break America”. It was the wrong question and has been for several years.
Soccer doesn’t need breaking in there – Major League Soccer attendances have long outstripped several of Europe’s established top flights, and the women’s game has had a genuine foothold since 1999. What this tournament should do is act as an accelerant.
The USA’s defeat to Belgium in the last 16 drew a combined 50m viewers across Fox and Telemundo, more than January’s NFL conference championship games averaged. This was never about discovering a new sport.
Celebrities have flocked to the tournament, too. Broadcast directors have been well briefed to zoom in on the stars in hospitality, even if ITV commentator Sam Matterface has struggled at times to name them all.
In the spiritual home of celebrity and influencer culture, Hollywood’s finest have been relishing all the drama.
Red, white and orange
None of that erases the mess around the Balogun episode. Whatever you think of the red card itself, a sitting US president phoning Infantino to lobby for a suspension to be lifted – and Fifa obliging, days before a knockout tie involving the co-host nation – is a very bad look under any competition regulation.
It fed exactly the conspiracy theory Fifa spends most of its time trying to deny: that the biggest teams and the biggest markets get treated differently when it matters.
Infantino’s insistence that the judicial process was untouched by the call convinces almost nobody, and Belgium’s furious reaction was entirely justified. Everyone expected Trump’s shadow to loom over the tournament, but nobody called this.
This is the story that will follow Fifa into the next World Cup rights negotiation, every bit as much as the ratings will.
I suspect that hydration breaks – controversial from the start, since they effectively carve the game into four quarters – might not be here to stay. They’re useful for managers, who get a free tactical time-out, and lucrative for broadcasters like Fox, who can cut to commercials.
But does Coca-Cola, parent company of Powerade, want its product associated with booing from disgruntled fans inside the ground? Fifa’s inclusion of the breaks makes it almost certain that bodies like Uefa and the Premier League will double down on rejecting them.
The allure of the World Cup is so powerful, the talent on show so supreme, the narratives of the beautiful game so pronounced, that Fifa has shown it can do almost anything to drive greater revenue and fans will still lap it up. But that doesn’t mean our enduring love affair with the World Cup is completely immune from Fifa’s incessant tinkering.
Infantino’s talk of a 64-team tournament in 2030 will curry favour with the smaller federations whose support he relies on so heavily. But going forward, Fifa needs to be intentional about preserving the integrity of the competition, the traditions of a game built on two halves, not four quarters, and ensuring the wants and needs of an ever-shifting global fanbase stay central to its thinking.
Amar Singh is SVP, Content and Creative for MKTG Sports + Entertainment. He writes and podcasts about sports marketing, content and culture here.