Show notes
The World Cup doesn’t understand America
John Prideaux, our executive editor, on why America is a spectacular place to host the football tournament
Jun 27th 2026|3 min read
Fans of soccerball love to complain about America. With its unbridled capitalism, it has the gall to treat football as a business. “Hydration breaks” have been introduced in this year’s World Cup. Fans suspect these are the first step to more frequent advert breaks for TV viewers, a grubbily commercial innovation that changes their game. Going to a match costs a fortune . Dynamic pricing may work in the NFL or NBA, where the market in tickets resembles the market for any other luxury good. But soccer, with its roots in teams of men who worked in the same factory, has different values. In economics terms, these countries consider football to be part of the commons.
In many of the big football countries there is an expectation that the **games **will be carried by channels that are available to everyone. Were the rights sold to the highest bidder, in profit-maximising fashion, and large numbers of people unable to watch, that would become an existential issue for the government of the day.
There’s the fact that Donald Trump’s America would seem singularly disinterested in being hospitable. Foreign fans who followed the operations of ICE in Minneapolis earlier this year wondered whether America actually wanted the world to visit. Then its government denied entry to Omar Artan, one of Africa’s best referees, simply because he was from Somalia. America’s president will help present the trophy to the winning team, which will make it harder for athletes to say that the tournament has nothing to do with politics. For all these reasons, the argument goes, America doesn’t understand the World Cup.
There is truth to this grumbling, but it misses a big reason why America is, in fact, a spectacular place to host the tournament. This struck me powerfully while I was watching Brazil v Haiti last week at a bar in lower Manhattan.
Yes, ticket prices are high: that reflects demand and also how much richer America is on a per person basis than other developed countries. New Jersey’s mass-transit system is indeed annoying. The Trump administration has attempted to spoil the vibe. But it has not succeeded. That is because of American exceptionalism.
The country’s population size and history of immigration means almost every nation competing in this World Cup has a sizable diaspora in the United States.
That is something Americans take for granted, but it means that you could run a pretty good World Cup in America without inviting any foreign visitors at all. My bar in SoHo was so full of Brazilians that we took over the sidewalk and spilled into the street. (I lived in São Paulo for three years, so they are my second team.) Football-crazed Brazil, which has won the championship five times, boasts a population of 220m, so it’s not hard to find a bar in London or Paris taken over by yellow and green shirts whose wearers, it turns out, can samba while carrying drinks.
More unusually, there were a bunch of Haitian fans in the bar, too. Haiti’s population is only 12m. But there are about 850,000 Haitian migrants in the United States. Add in those who claim Haitian ancestry and you get a bigger number. This is an “only in America” thing.
In fact, pretty much every nation represented in the World Cup will have a bar just in New York City that is designated as home turf. A dedicated football fan could travel the world, attending home games for every country from Algeria to Uzbekistan, using only the subway. And then there is the way that American cities have adopted nationalities—think of the Scots in Boston or the Bosnians in St Louis. If you had to pick one country as the permanent host of the World Cup, America would surely be it.
世界盃不懂美國
約翰·普里多，本刊執行編輯，談美國為何是舉辦足球賽事的絕佳之地
2026年6月27日｜3分鐘閱讀
足球迷們最愛抱怨美國。這個資本主義肆意橫行的國家，竟然膽敢將足球視為一門生意。本屆世界盃引入了「補水休息」環節。球迷們懷疑，這不過是日後增加更多電視廣告時段的第一步——一項改變他們心愛運動的銅臭味創新。入場看球的費用高得嚇人。動態定價或許適用於NFL或NBA——這些賽事的門票市場與其他奢侈品市場並無二致。但足球有其根基，它發源於同一工廠的工人球隊，承載著不同的價值觀。用經濟學術語來說，這些國家將足球視為公共財。
在許多足球大國，人們普遍期望比賽能在所有人均可收看的頻道上播出。若將版權以利潤最大化的方式售予出價最高者，導致大批民眾無緣觀賽，那將對當屆政府構成生死攸關的政治危機。
還有一個問題：唐納·川普的美國，似乎對接待外賓毫無興趣。今年稍早，跟蹤報導移民及海關執法局 (ICE)在明尼阿波利斯行動的外國球迷，都不禁疑惑——美國究竟是否歡迎世界各地的訪客？接著，美國政府以索馬利亞籍為由，拒絕非洲頂尖裁判之一奧馬爾·阿爾坦入境。此外，美國總統將親自上台為冠軍球隊頒獎，這讓運動員們更難辯稱本屆賽事與政治無關。基於以上種種，外界的說法是：美國不懂世界盃。
這些抱怨不無道理，但卻忽略了一個重要原因——美國其實是舉辦本屆賽事的絕佳之地。上週我在曼哈頓下城一間酒吧觀看巴西對海地的比賽時，這一點深深震撼了我。
是的，票價高昂——這反映的是市場需求，也反映出美國人均財富遠高於其他已開發國家。紐澤西的公共交通系統確實令人惱火。川普政府也試圖破壞氣氛。但它並未得逞。原因，正在於美國的獨特性。
這個國家龐大的人口規模與悠久的移民歷史，意味著幾乎每個參賽國在美國都擁有相當規模的海外僑民社群。
這是美國人視為理所當然的事，但正因如此，即便不邀請任何海外訪客，美國也能辦出一屆相當精彩的世界盃。我在蘇活區那間酒吧裡，巴西人多到我們佔領了人行道，蔓延至街道。（我在聖保羅生活過三年，所以巴西是我的第二支主隊。）熱愛足球的巴西擁有兩億兩千萬人口、五度稱霸世界盃，要在倫敦或巴黎找到一間被黃綠球衣淹沒的酒吧並不難——而那些穿著球衣的人，原來還能一邊端著飲料一邊跳森巴。
更難得的是，酒吧裡還有一群海地球迷。海地總人口僅一千兩百萬，但在美國卻有約八十五萬海地移民。若再加上具有海地血統的人，這個數字還會更大。這就是「只有在美國才會發生」的事。
事實上，幾乎每個參賽國都能在紐約市找到一間屬於自己的「主場酒吧」。一位鐵桿球迷只需搭乘地鐵，便能「環遊世界」，為每一支從阿爾及利亞到烏茲別克的球隊觀看主場比賽。更不用說美國城市認養各國文化的傳統——想想波士頓的蘇格蘭人，或聖路易的波士尼亞人。若真要選出一個永久舉辦世界盃的國家，美國無疑是不二之選。
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