The plan was always to convert America. Bring the World Cup to US soil, expose 330 million sports-hungry people to the game at its peak, and watch a nation fall in love with soccer. That was the theory, anyway. What actually happened is the opposite: America converted the World Cup.
Spain's 1-0 win over Argentina on July 19 closed out a tournament that looked and felt increasingly like an NFL product — commercial breaks baked into hydration stoppages, a half-time show that ran nearly 30 minutes and featured BTS, Madonna and Shakira, and dynamic ticket pricing that FIFA president Gianni Infantino defended with the bluntness of a league commissioner. If fans pay those prices on the secondary market, why shouldn't FIFA capture that value directly? Hard to argue with the logic, even if it stings.
The economics are doing the talking
FIFA is projecting record revenues of $10 billion from this tournament. More tellingly, the audience numbers are going up, not down. Norway, Sweden and Australia all reported all-time broadcast highs during the group stage. Fox, the US broadcast partner, is reportedly set to make as much as $600 million from ad sales during those mandatory hydration breaks alone — money that makes World Cup rights more attractive to future bidders.
That context matters because European club football's growth model is quietly breaking down. Deloitte's July report found that while Europe's major leagues generated over $46 billion in 2024-25, the engine behind that number — escalating TV rights deals — is sputtering. Younger audiences consume highlights. They don't sit through 90 minutes. Broadcast income is plateauing across most major leagues while wage bills keep climbing. The Premier League still leads on revenue, but its losses are growing too.
FIFA noticed. The World Cup funds much of the global football infrastructure — youth academies, small national federations, development programmes. If the sport's traditional growth model weakens, FIFA either finds new revenue or starts cutting things that actually matter to the game's future.
What's lost, and what's gained
There are real costs to the American approach, and glossing over them would be dishonest. The half-time spectacle forced players with highly structured routines to sit idle for double the usual intermission. The hydration break ad windows interrupt the rhythm that makes football different from every other major sport. Fans who watched FIFA's corruption scandals play out over the last decade have every right to eye Infantino's revenue enthusiasm with suspicion.
But the restraint that once made football distinctive is increasingly a luxury the sport can't afford. The media landscape has fractured. Attention is the scarcest resource in entertainment. The NFL turned the Super Bowl half-time show from a marching band into a global cultural event — and viewership went up. MLB sold the sponsorship rights to its new automated ball-strike review system to T-Mobile before the rule had been in place a season. Every major American sport has made this trade, and none of them have lost their audiences for it.
Soccer can object to the interruptions. The numbers make it harder to object to the outcome. FIFA found a more commercial version of its flagship event — and the world watched it in record numbers anyway.
