Diego Maradona called it in 2018. "They will divide the game into four halves instead of two to insert advertisements," he said after the USA, Canada and Mexico were awarded the tournament. He wasn't far off.
The hydration breaks — one per half, three minutes each — are ad breaks with better branding. The half-time show during the final stretched to 20 minutes. Ticket prices for Argentina vs Spain at MetLife Stadium ranged from $30,000 on FIFA's official site to a reported $2.3 million on the secondary market. And the winners got championship rings. Actual championship rings, lifted straight from the NFL and NBA, engraved with the player's name, shirt number, the final score, and the official tournament logo.
Football has always flirted with commercialisation. The 2026 edition didn't flirt — it signed the papers.
The money is undeniable, and that's the whole point
FIFA will report record revenues of $15 billion from this tournament, against an original projection of $11 billion. That's not a rounding error — that's a completely different financial reality. Gianni Infantino, already on his third term, now has a compelling case for a fourth. When you overshoot a revenue target by $4 billion, you don't get voted out.
Some of the decisions made along the way were harder to defend. The red card reversal for Folarin Balogun raised serious questions about sporting integrity — questions that got relatively quiet answers given the commercial backdrop. Donald Trump's entry bans on certain foreign nationals added a political dimension that FIFA, publicly committed to inclusion, largely absorbed without pushback.
Trump himself was unambiguous about whose tournament this really was. "You should choose the United States of America again," he said after the final. "This time we will leave Canada and Mexico out." He's already eyeing 2038.
What sticks, and what it means
The real question isn't whether the Americanisation of football was good or bad — it's which parts of it are permanent. The championship rings are almost certainly here to stay. The extended half-time show will be harder to walk back once casual audiences are hooked. The ad-break structure dressed as player welfare is the most insidious change, because it has a fig leaf of justification.
For anyone pricing future tournaments or tracking FIFA's commercial trajectory, the $15 billion figure is the one that matters. It sets the floor. Every future host city, every broadcast rights negotiation, every sponsorship deal now starts from that number.
Maradona said they'd turn football into something else. He was right. The sport that landed in America has come back wearing a different kit.
