FIFA promised six million fans and an eighty billion dollar economic boom. Instead, hotel rooms in several host cities are sitting empty, prices are collapsing, international visitors are staying away, and only one city is seeing what everyone expected.
Many who bought tickets in October for Belgium against New Zealand in Vancouver on June twenty sixth nearly gave up on their World Cup. When they looked for a room, they found prices as high as fourteen hundred Canadian dollars, about one thousand U.S. dollars, per night, until it simply became ridiculous. Some gave up in April and put their tickets up for sale. But before those tickets sold, hotel prices started to fall. Those who booked again in May found rooms for around two hundred eighty five dollars, and in the end even a five star hotel for almost the same amount. That good fortune became the sign of the tournament.
FIFA expected more than six million fans and calculated that the tournament, with its one hundred four matches in sixteen cities across three countries, could generate eighty billion dollars for the global economy and give the United States alone a boost of thirty point five billion dollars. Its president Gianni Infantino said last year the world would stand still for it and called it one hundred four Super Bowls in a single month. The world is not standing still.
In several host cities, in New York and Toronto and also in Miami, hotel bookings on match days are below those of last year. Trusting in the expected crowds, hotels had pushed prices up by as much as five hundred percent above normal, and then they fell from those peaks, most sharply in Vancouver and in Monterrey, Mexico. In Vancouver, prices this summer now match those of last year, except for surcharges of one hundred to two hundred dollars on match days. And although there had been years of warnings about room shortages, occupancy in Greater Vancouver before the tournament was, according to the hotel industry, around nine percent below June 2025 and in downtown Vancouver roughly fifteen percent lower. Some travelers canceled and rebooked repeatedly to catch lower prices, while others tied to non refundable rates were left bitter. The bigger disappointment is international visitors. FIFA expected four out of ten visitors to come from abroad, but flights booked before June from the European Union to most host cities for June and July declined compared with the previous year. Bookings to Kennedy Airport in New York fell by more than fifteen percent and those to San Francisco by nearly ten. Across all cities, Jan Freitag of CoStar said expectations were still settling and summer would turn out better for hotels than the last one.
One city got what the others expected. Kansas City reported one third more bookings than a year ago across all six match periods, and its short term rentals, which increased after the city reduced fees, sold nearly half again as many nights around the matches and doubled expectations. When Argentina played Algeria on June sixteenth, hotels across the region were sold out or nearly so. The city was cheaper than Los Angeles or New York, said Andrea O’Hara of the local hotel association, it sits in the center of the country where matches everywhere are reachable, and it attracted the crowds following the Netherlands and Argentina with its star Lionel Messi, causing arrivals from Argentina at the airport to rise by more than two thousand percent. Yet visitors are staying for shorter periods than hoped and thinning noticeably between matches. In New York, the mood is darker. The city’s hotel association cut its expected revenue growth in half to one hundred million dollars, and its chairman Vijay Dandapani called the tournament deeply disappointing and sobering. FIFA had promised the region one million two hundred thousand visitors, and the industry, he said, would be satisfied with four hundred thousand. Hotels are rolling back increases that had reached as much as three hundred percent above last year, and prices now resemble an ordinary June. He named the reasons openly, rising costs, missing business travelers, the final being held in New Jersey rather than the city itself, and continuing obstacles for international arrivals.
The disappointment is clearest in Seattle, where flights and rental housing are below last year, along with hotels. The city is hosting six matches. The first, Belgium against Egypt, took place on June fifteenth, with the other five following at Lumen Field, temporarily renamed Seattle Stadium for the tournament. At the Silver Cloud Hotel near T Mobile Park and the stadium, a manager reported that none of the six matches had sold out. For Belgium against Egypt on June fifteenth, the hotel expected sixty two percent occupancy, for the United States against Australia on June nineteenth eighty nine percent, for Bosnia and Herzegovina against Qatar on June twenty fourth fifty six percent, for Egypt against Iran on June twenty sixth seventy five percent, for the Round of 32 on July first twenty seven percent, and for the Round of 16 on July sixth sixteen percent. Rooms initially listed at more than twelve hundred dollars per night around the early matches have since fallen to as low as three hundred nine dollars. Perhaps Americans do not like soccer as much as organizers believed.
Ticket prices matter as well. For Seattle’s most sought after match, the United States against Australia on June nineteenth, tickets are still available, close to one thousand dollars on the secondary market, while individual seats for later knockout matches were already being offered for two thousand dollars before anyone even knew who would play. For Egypt against Iran on June twenty sixth, prices dropped significantly and more tickets appeared for sale, possibly released late because fewer international visitors were traveling. That match also falls on Pride Night, meaning one place could bring together what does not fit easily together, supporters from Iran and Egypt, Iranian regime critics, Jewish activists against the Iranian regime, Hamas aligned counter protesters, and Seattle’s left wing scene.
The city’s reputation may also be depressing demand. Before the tournament, authorities held a press conference on public safety after reports of crime and drugs and gang violence circulated, along with images of residents in northern Seattle building their own barricades. Police staffing shortages remain unresolved, and while security around stadiums and hotels is likely to be dense, the rest of the city remains thinly covered. Added to this, the pedestrian zone around Pioneer Square closes streets for about four hours before each match and several afterward, including First Avenue between Edgar Martinez Drive and Second Avenue as well as James Street, with only limited vehicle access. A manager at the Silver Cloud therefore expects cancellations from guests unwilling to spend hours unable to reach their cars.
And FIFA itself released up to seventy percent of the room blocks it had reserved for staff and delegates in several cities, including Boston and Dallas, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, Kansas City and Seattle. Associations called such releases normal for an event of this scale but were surprised by the number, and according to a May report those room blocks had created an artificial early sign of demand. FIFA did not respond to a request. Already in spring, reports from Vancouver said thousands of reserved overnight stays had been released again, an early sign projections were not holding up. In Kansas City, FIFA reportedly canceled around seventy five percent of the rooms reserved for officials and partners after initially holding up to five thousand rooms per night. Across the country, it released tens of thousands of reserved rooms.
Overall, the event is weaker than expected. Through May, the number of overseas visitors was nearly five percent below the same months last year, and even last year the United States was the only major country where international tourism actually declined. The hotel association reported that nearly eighty percent of surveyed hotels in host cities recorded occupancy below expectations before the tournament and warned that visa barriers and concern about the country’s politics were significantly reducing international demand. Industry experts also blamed growing reluctance toward America, fueled by the current political climate. Hope now rests on a late surge, travelers who book later and stay fewer nights than anyone predicted.
For the quick thinking, the collapse became an opportunity. Those who booked refundable rooms early, for example for three trips to group stage matches in Houston at double the usual rate of around six hundred dollars, were able to rebook in April as prices fell and save around six hundred fifty dollars. For others, it became a wound. Those who booked a non refundable room in early April to watch two matches in Vancouver paid around six hundred forty dollars after the price had dropped from nine hundred twenty and seemed unlikely to fall further. Then it collapsed anyway, and those who called both the hotel and the chain headquarters, often more than ten times, to close the gap had no luck. Some advise the men who run world soccer to consider what they are doing to fans with these prices for tickets and rooms. Frustrated fans often repeat the same line, the game is supposed to bring people together, but these practices do not.
That last sentence is the whole story. A tournament was sold as a force that would stop the world, one hundred four Super Bowls in a single month. Six million strangers were supposed to flood the same cities and stand side by side, and the men who sold that vision put a price on standing side by side that emptied the rooms it was meant to fill. What cannot be commanded is people’s desire to come, and that desire met a country that is harder to enter than before and a welcome that costs more than a welcome should cost. Hotels will lower their prices and some will still come, later and for fewer nights, and stand and sing among the good crowds in Kansas City. But the promise that the world would stand still has already been answered, by the silence of rooms that were supposed to be full.
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