How the 2026 World Cup's Economic Model Works: From FIFA's Billions to City-Level Payoffs

The 2026 FIFA World Cup's economic model operates on global projections and city-level impacts, both derived from economic modeling. Understanding the layers of direct, indirect, and induced spending is key to interpreting these projection-driven figures, which are not audited results.

Priya Singh

July 3, 2026 · Updated October 31, 2026 · 4 min read

The economic model of the 2026 FIFA World Cup runs on two distinct scales. At the national and global level, a FIFA-commissioned study estimates the tournament alone could drive up to $40.9 billion in gross domestic product and support roughly 824,000 full-time-equivalent jobs worldwide. At the city level, host committees use regional input-output models to trace how much of that activity lands in specific places — a June 2024 projection prepared for Los Angeles by the consulting firm Micronomics, and a New York/New Jersey host committee impact analysis measuring $1.9 billion in direct spending in the regional economy. Understanding how those figures are built, and what each layer of spending represents, is the key to interpreting them.

Understanding the World Cup's Economic Model

Mega-event economics is projection-driven. None of the headline numbers for the World Cup are audited results; they are outputs of modeling, built by estimating an initial injection of spending and then tracing how that money circulates through a regional economy. The Los Angeles host committee's report, prepared by Micronomics, describes this as a sequence: an initial round of direct spending, followed by "follow-on" activity measured with IMPLAN modeling software based on historical spending patterns. The New York/New Jersey host committee report uses the same architecture, feeding measured direct impacts into a regional input-output model to estimate the indirect and induced layers. That framework — direct, indirect, induced — is the common denominator across all the figures in circulation, and it explains why totals consistently exceed the initial spending they start from.

National and Global Projections: The FIFA Perspective

The broadest view comes from studies released in April 2025 by FIFA and the World Trade Organization Secretariat, with the modeling conducted by the consultancy OpenEconomics. Looking at the 2026 tournament specifically, OpenEconomics estimates it could drive up to $40.9 billion in GDP, deliver $8.28 billion in social benefits, and underpin the creation of nearly 824,000 full-time-equivalent jobs globally. For the United States alone, the firm estimates 185,000 FTE jobs, $30.5 billion in gross output and $17.2 billion in GDP. A companion analysis combining the 2025 Club World Cup and the 2026 World Cup puts total economic output in the US at roughly $47 billion, adding $62 billion to global GDP and 290,000 US jobs across the two events. These figures set the macro ceiling against which city-level reports are read.

Deconstructing Economic Impact: Direct, Indirect, and Induced

The framework below shows how a single aggregate "economic impact" figure is assembled layer by layer, using the definitions from the Los Angeles and New York/New Jersey reports.

Three layers of World Cup economic impact, as defined in the host committee reports
Layer	Definition	Los Angeles County	New York/New Jersey
Direct	Money spent by the host committee, FIFA and other stakeholders on match, stadium and fan-event operations — payroll, policing and security, medical, transport, hospitality, marketing, insurance and professional services — plus attendee spending.	Roughly $700 million in projected direct spending.	$1.9 billion in direct spending in the regional economy, including spending by match and fan-event attendees.
Indirect	The spending by regional businesses that receive the direct money as they buy goods and services — for example, restaurants with increased revenues purchasing more ingredients and supplies.	About $200 million projected.	Estimated through the regional input-output model; the remaining counties of New York and New Jersey are included in these impacts.
Induced	The household spending of income earned from direct and indirect activity — for example, newly hired restaurant workers spending their wages locally.	About $300 million projected.	Estimated through the same model as a downstream effect of direct spending.

Three layers of World Cup economic impact, as defined in the host committee reports

Layer

Definition

Los Angeles County

New York/New Jersey

Direct

Money spent by the host committee, FIFA and other stakeholders on match, stadium and fan-event operations — payroll, policing and security, medical, transport, hospitality, marketing, insurance and professional services — plus attendee spending.

Roughly $700 million in projected direct spending.

$1.9 billion in direct spending in the regional economy, including spending by match and fan-event attendees.

Indirect

The spending by regional businesses that receive the direct money as they buy goods and services — for example, restaurants with increased revenues purchasing more ingredients and supplies.

About $200 million projected.

Estimated through the regional input-output model; the remaining counties of New York and New Jersey are included in these impacts.

Induced

The household spending of income earned from direct and indirect activity — for example, newly hired restaurant workers spending their wages locally.

About $300 million projected.

Estimated through the same model as a downstream effect of direct spending.

The Los Angeles report makes the mechanics explicit: direct spending is calculated first, and the follow-on layers are then derived from it using IMPLAN modeling. This is why the table matters for interpretation. A city's total impact is not just the money visitors and organizers bring in; it is that money plus each subsequent round of regional re-spending, with the multiplier embedded in the model rather than observed directly. The New York/New Jersey report notes that its direct impacts "serve as inputs for… a regional input-output (I-O) model to estimate indirect and induced impacts," confirming the same sequencing.

Balancing Benefits and Public Costs

The Los Angeles report addresses the question every host region asks: what does the public side pay against what it gets back? Micronomics projects increased tax revenue to LA County and the state of California — including sales and use taxes from follow-on spending — while acknowledging that some of that revenue will be offset by increased costs in city and county services, logistics, transportation and community engagement.

Its conclusion is a net judgment, not a guarantee: the net financial impact "likely will be positive for LA County," partly because governmental costs associated with hosting flow back into the local economy as income for businesses and workers, generating additional tax revenue. The report also observes that hosting costs are tempered by the region's use of existing infrastructure rather than new construction. Comparable cost breakdowns are not available in the evidence for every host city, so this balance sheet should be read as specific to Los Angeles.

How the 2026 World Cup's Economic Model Works: From FIFA's Billions to City-Level Payoffs

Understanding the World Cup's Economic Model

National and Global Projections: The FIFA Perspective

Tags

City-Level Impacts: Los Angeles and New York/New Jersey

Deconstructing Economic Impact: Direct, Indirect, and Induced

Balancing Benefits and Public Costs

Interpreting the World Cup's Economic Footprint

Sources

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