Behind the excitement of the World Cup, local organizers are working to protect workers, immigrants and residents from the tournament’s fallout.
Soccer is one of the most beloved sports in the world, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup—the largest in the tournament’s history—has drawn millions of fans across the globe. This year, for the first time, the event is being jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, with matches and related events taking place across North America.
FIFA stands to earn billions of dollars from the tournament.
But as the organization reaps record revenues, many host communities are bearing significant costs. Soaring ticket prices, displacement, labor concerns and aggressive immigration enforcement have raised questions about who truly benefits from the World Cup. For many working-class residents—and even lifelong soccer fans—the tournament is out of reach.
To better understand those impacts, I spoke with Jennifer Li, co-director of the Center for Community Health Innovation at the O’Neill Institute and director of Dignity 2026, a coalition of labor and human rights organizations working to protect communities most at risk during the World Cup.
For Li, the affordability crisis is best illustrated by the people who should be at the center of the event: soccer fans themselves. She recalled speaking with a cab driver whose family had dreamed of attending the World Cup but found ticket prices far beyond their reach: “His family is Ethiopian, he has two kids, and they know that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go to the World Cup, but they can’t pay for it, they can’t afford it. It’s like, even if it’s $1,000 I would pay for it, I just can’t pay $14,000 or $7,000 for three tickets.”
Soccer “is very much an immigrant sport, let’s face it,” said Li, “and by extension, a sport for people of color, diverse communities. It is a sport that’s not expensive to play, but very expensive to watch, apparently. So, the question then becomes: Who is this for?”
The economic benefits of hosting the World Cup are often taken for granted. But Li argues that many cities are being asked to invest enormous resources without any guarantee of meaningful returns:
“FIFA stands to generate $13 billion in revenue from this tournament, yet it isn’t funding the host cities responsible for much of the operation. FIFA also imposes strict limits on how cities can raise money through corporate sponsorships. If FIFA has Coca-Cola as a top-tier sponsor, and Coca-Cola owns a coffee subsidiary, then Boston can’t seek sponsorship from Dunkin’ Donuts, and Seattle can’t partner with Starbucks. “That’s how constrained these cities are. We’re asking a lot of local governments and communities during an already turbulent political, legal, cultural and social moment.”
Li doesn’t want this to be a doom-and-gloom take—she is a soccer fan herself, supporting Tottenham Hotspur, and the World Cup “is something that’s meant to be joyful and fun,” she says.
Yet, Li says the World Cup is something happening not with or for the communities in these cities, but to them.
Despite repeated assurances about human-rights safeguards, critics say FIFA has not adequately addressed risks in the 16 North American host cities. (Three cities are in Mexico, 11 in the United States and two in Canada.) Host cities were required to create and publish human rights action plans that outlined how they would prepare for the increased likelihood of human rights violations during the games—a direct response to the backlash the organization faced during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. However, the plans lack real legal bite because they are not legally binding or enforceable.
Li explained, “These are cities that on any given day, even without the added stress of the World Cup, is going through … challenging public health crises or economic health crises, so obviously, with the influx of millions of people, of foot traffic, of lodgers, of people riding public transit, you’re going to have … a threat multiplier.”
These threats include heat stress for players and workers, the fentanyl crisis in Vancouver, B.C., the construction of a “World Cup jail” in Kansas City, Mo., and continuing threats to immigrants under the Trump administration in the U.S., to name a few.
As Li points out, each of the host cities have vastly different risk profiles, laws and regulations, which cannot be addressed with a broad, vague set of guidelines like the ones provided by FIFA. This has left the actual planning to local organizations, which is where the Dignity 2026 Coalition comes in:
“The implementation of [human rights] commitments comes at the local level, and that’s where myself, particularly in the coalition, comes in: to help organize at the local level … “I’m a community based movement lawyer by training and by trade here. So for me, my focus is always: What does this look like in the cities? How do we use this as an excuse to organize our cities and ask for better—like more public restrooms? How do we ask for more humane laws and regulations for how we treat members our own community, including people who are unhoused? How do we make sure that people of all immigration status are protected, not shut out in this environment of fear during the world’s biggest party that is supposed to be inclusive of them but ends up not? How do we make sure that we deploy the rapid-response or systems infrastructure already on the ground to connect them with legal experts and volunteer attorneys and to someone to pick up the phone if and when something happens?”
Much of the work of preparing for the tournament’s social and economic impacts falls to local organizations, helping communities navigate issues ranging from housing and labor rights to immigration enforcement and public safety. These issues touch everyone—players, workers, residents and visitors—and the impact is felt well after the last whistle blows on the last game.
Dignity 2026 is doing what they can to help support local community members and organizations to localize responses and ensure that resources are being allocated in ways that make sense.
It is the impetus for the Host City Score Card, developed by Dignity 2026, to keep track of FIFA’s own metrics, which include 20 different indicators, in each host city and whether the cities are meeting the benchmarks. A critical aspect of this is that local and community groups, who are experts in the policy and politics of their city and have a pulse on what is happening on the ground, will be scoring their own cities.
Mega events will only increase as we move into the future. The “advocacy target at this point isn’t just FIFA,” Li says. “People will come and go, but more sporting events will come. There will be the IOC, there’s going to be Formula One, there’s going to be a Republican National Convention, a Democratic National Convention, there’s going to be Super Bowls, there’s going to be Beyoncé concerts, right? This is about how mega events and mega opportunities are done in a thoughtful, intentional way—either in coordination with local stakeholders or not.”
The 2026 World Cup began on June 11, but we’ll be tracking the metrics in each of these cities even after the Cup comes to an end and these cities adjust in the dust left behind.
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About Mariah A. Lindsay
Source: Ms. Magazine
