The United States hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2038 and beyond

The Game Room
1

The United States is looking extremely likely to be the host of the 2038 FIFA World Cup, mainly due to confederation-hosting-rotation rules. Since Africa+Europe+South America are hosting the 2030 Cup together, and Asia is hosting the 2034 edition (Saudi Arabia,) this means that Oceania and CONCACAF remain the only two eligible confederations that can host.

Oceania, of course, will never be able to host a Cup. Canada and Mexico each lack the stadiums needed to host a 48-team Cup all by themselves. So the only viable options that remain are the United States doing it all by itself, or a repeat of this year’s Canada + Mexico + USA bid.

A 48-nation Cup is already so massive (104 games) that it reduces the number of nations capable of hosting by themselves. And there is already talk of FIFA expanding it to 64 teams (128 games), although that still looks iffy. If a 64-team Cup takes off, it would become unfeasible for all but the biggest of nations to host (such as the USA and maybe China,) or it could make multi-nation hosting the norm from now on (the 2042 Cup, for instance, might be some England+Germany+France combo.)

And of course there’s money too. This year’s World Cup in North America brought a record-breaking $15 billion revenue for FIFA, and the greedy eyes of FIFA will find it hard to resist having America host once every 12 years as the regular rotation.

And the NFL is only going to build snazzier and snazzier stadiums. This year’s Mercedes-Benz, AT&T, SoFi Stadiums were already highly impressive to global visitors. In the upcoming years, we’re going to see Nissan stadium (Tennessee Titans,) a new Cleveland Browns enclosed stadium, a new Washington Commanders enclosed stadium, and the Bears and Chiefs also have plans for new enclosed stadiums too. This will make the USA all the more attractive as a regular World Cup host.

2

Hell yes … for the merest consideration of a gaudy gold token to the HoS the US could save FIFA the expense of all those technical review panels, appeals and judiciary, even the refs and other rules focused do-gooders, and just declare the teamUSA as the winner. Save so much time, money, anguish to achieve the desired biggly result.

Unsure they’d seriously want to host, but make the minor adjustment of a 48-nation Cup being run with two pools from each stadium equating to six games/venue in the same 2-week period and it doesn’t seem quite so infeasible, no?