A World Cup to host, a war to win: Will US geopolitics hurt global turnout? Expert clarifies
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is supposed to be a summer-long festival across the United States, Mexico and Canada but for many fans doing the math, it already feels like a “luxury event;” pricey tickets, pricier flights, and hotel rates that can spike for weeks in host cities.
Layer on a tense geopolitical climate, and the big question becomes less about goals and more about who will actually show up.
That’s the worry of Jim McCarthy, founder of Impresario Strategic Growth Service and marketing expert, raised in a conversation with Global South World. His view is that the tournament’s challenge isn’t only “high ticket prices”, but the full cost of attendance. “It’s not just the tickets but the travel, the hotels,” he said, noting that high-demand events push prices up across the board, from Airbnbs to transport.
McCarthy argues FIFA may be leaning too heavily on an American pricing reality. “The US sports culture is different…people are used to paying a lot for sports tickets,” he said, adding that FIFA could see it as a financial opportunity. The risk, he said, is misreading the audience. “The audience for the World Cup is actually a global audience, not just an American audience…that conflict is going to be a challenge for marketing the tournament,” especially if international supporters feel priced out of group-stage matches, the very games most likely to draw travelling fans.
But the bigger wild card, McCarthy says, is politics and whether fans feel welcome. “Any friction or barrier that people feel about going to a live event is gonna make it harder to sell that event,” he said. In his view, people don’t need much encouragement to stay home when the trip is already expensive; even small anxieties can tip the decision.
That anxiety has been further increased by a year of harder-edged US policy and global tension. From tariff fights and tougher entry rules to expanding military confrontations.
From the last quarter of 2025 and early 2026, the Donald Trump-led government issued new restrictions on entry for certain foreign nationals. Even though there was widespread criticism about these policies, and their consequent ripple effects on travel and events like the World Cup, most stood unchanged or with very little changes.
And the Middle East war is now bleeding directly into football. Iran’s participation has become a live issue. Iran’s sports minister has said the national team would not take part “under no circumstances,” even as other Iranian officials have suggested they could still play if matches were moved out of the US.
For McCarthy, that’s the heart of the 2026 test, FIFA can sell tickets, but it still has to sell a feeling that fans from everywhere belong. “You want people to feel welcome…you want them to feel that they’ll be taken care of,” he said, arguing the tournament could also be an opportunity “to make football fans around the world feel that they belong here.”
The 2026 World Cup is scheduled to take place from June 11 through to July 19, yet with barely three months away, US President Trump is on the geopolitical front, waging war alongside Israel against Iran.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
