In Montreal, they’re not preparing for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Canadian tourism officials are basking in the glow of another successful Formula 1 race last month and getting set for the city’s summer jazz festival—the world’s largest—all while commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Summer Olympics, culminating in The Great Nadia Gathering, where 50 people named Nadia will be chosen in a drawing and get to meet ’76 Games gymnastics legend Nadia Comăneci.
In Chicago, they’re not preparing for the World Cup, either.
While FIFA organizers are still trying to unload tickets to the U.S. Men’s National Team June 12 opener against Paraguay in Los Angeles, Chi-town saw off the USMNT in a warmup game against Germany before a packed house at Soldier Field. Then there are concerts to plan for at the 102-year-old venue: piano-flipping country star Morgan Wallen, folk pop favorite Ed Sheeran and reggaeton superstar Karol G.
Minneapolis has other things to do this summer, too, including a two-night WWE Summer Slam, the six-day Special Olympics USA Games and a visit from the Savannah Bananas.
In all three cities, life will go on without the World Cup. Years ago, they all said no to FIFA when it solicited match sites. As the global tournament approaches, filling the 16 host locales with hope and angst, the people who made the decision to opt out seem OK with it.
“Our government made a responsible decision in the management of public funds, and in hindsight, it was the right one,” Quebec Minister of Tourism Amélie Dionne said in a statement to Sportico.
Minneapolis and Chicago pulled out in 2018, also citing financial considerations and FIFA demands they couldn’t meet.
Matt Meunier, the executive vice president of business development & tourism for Minnesota Sports and Events, worked on the bid at the time. “I think universally we all agreed, it’s a fantastic event, global stage, puts a spotlight on our community in a positive way,” he said. “But there were two key challenges at the time.”
One was that the region’s sports organizers had just come off hosting the 2018 Super Bowl in Minneapolis. “That event for us was 100% financed through corporate fundraising,” Meunier said, “and so we had to go back to these corporate community partners who are fantastic and say, ‘Oh, by the way, the commitment we just needed from you for Super Bowl, we need to multiply that to get to where we need to be for FIFA—can you do that?’”
The feedback from those partners was “really simple,” he said. “Where’s the public support?”
The city and state didn’t have a sufficient public-funding mechanism in place then, Meunier said. The other challenge was a perceived lack of flexibility in FIFA demands about things like size and duration of fan festivals, and the two-month no-go zones created around the stadium venues, where no other events could be held. Lacking clarity, Minneapolis dropped its bid.
The story was similar in Chicago, where then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel decided the best move was not to play. “The uncertainty for taxpayers, coupled with FIFA’s inflexibility and unwillingness to negotiate,” Emanuel’s office said at the time, “were clear indications that further pursuit of the bid wasn’t in Chicago’s best interests.”
(Emanuel did not return a message seeking comment. Officials from the Chicago Sports Commission initially agreed to an interview with Sportico, then canceled, saying the organization would “like to focus on the business that we are bringing in this year.”)
Montreal’s decision, made in 2021, took longer and was perhaps more fraught. The cosmopolitan city is sports-mad, with a growing soccer culture and six Canadian national teamers hailing from there. But it’s also endured its share of hardship from the business of sports, with the painful departure of MLB’s Expos in 2004 and the checkered financial history of the ’76 Olympics, which left the government saddled with a billion-dollar debt that took three decades to pay off.
Citing rising cost estimates for taxpayers, which had ballooned from CAD$50 million in 2018 to CAD$103 million ($75 million at current exchange rates) by 2021, the Quebec provincial government pulled the plug.
In a recent segment on the Radio-Canada investigative news program Enquête, former Quebec Tourism Minister Caroline Proulx expounded further on the reasons for the rejection. Among them were FIFA’s list of unfunded mandates for the city, including construction of new elevators exclusively for FIFA guests at the Olympic Stadium and a demand that the venue’s roof be retractable for the tournament.
After Montreal pulled out, costs kept mounting for the two other Canadian host cities, Toronto and Vancouver. The Enquête report cited documents showing Toronto on the hook for CAD $380 million, up from an estimated CAD $45 million, and Vancouver’s costs exploding to CAD $620 million from an initial CAD $240 million estimate.
FIFA did not respond to a message seeking comment for this story.
Proulx, who declined an interview request from Sportico and deferred to the current tourism minister’s statement, told Enquête that FIFA also demanded access to the city’s Parc Jean-Drapeau and the city’s Old Port from May 22 through July 17. Annexing those public gathering places, Proulx said, would have compromised the F1 race, the Montreal Triathlon and the Montreal Jazz Festival, among other events. “There was no way that I was calling F1 to tell them that FIFA was demanding a [sporting event] blackout,” she said.
While the Quebec Ministry of Tourism said it does not have an overall estimate of the economic impacts of potential cancellations, a ministry spokesman added in a statement to Sportico that hosting the World Cup “would have had a considerable effect on several major events” that are “the backbone of Montreal’s event ecosystem and contribute substantially to its economy.”
As an example, the ministry cited the 2023 F1 Grand Prix as generating CAD$67.4 million in economic spinoffs and CAD$11.32 million in tax benefits. In general, the ministry said, each of Quebec’s main tourism events generates “an average of $30 million in economic spinoffs” every year.
“These figures speak to the importance of established major events,” the spokesman said.
Quebec chose to bank on reliable standbys rather than take a risk on FIFA, whose promise of a $17 billion increase in gross domestic product for the U.S. from the World Cup has been met with skepticism, in part because tourism impacts are closely tied to matchups in particular cities.
Host cities such as Kansas City, with games featuring Argentina and the Netherlands, have seen spikes in hotel occupancy and prices, while the San Francisco Bay Area—whose opening rounds feature Algeria, Australia, Jordan, Paraguay, Switzerland, Turkey and Qatar—has seen no hotel boost and declining prices for tickets to the games at Levi’s Stadium.
In addition, FIFA has effectively taken complete control over every stadium and a huge chunk of their surrounding areas. Normally busy nearby venues such as Houston’s Astrodome (next to NRG Stadium) and LA’s YouTube Theater (adjacent to SoFi Stadium) went dark in mid-May and will remain so until mid-July.
That won’t be the case in Chicago, which will fill Soldier Field with sure-fire concert draws rather than hoped-for legions of supporters from Uzbekistan.
Not everyone is happy with the decisions, of course. Fans in every potential host city wanted in on the party. But much of the good feeling in the runup to the tournament has been diminished by FIFA’s record ticket prices, concerns from foreign visitors about Donald Trump’s immigration and visa policies, and the fact that the U.S. is at war with a visiting team’s nation.
Meunier still said he’s hoping the World Cup is a big success, in part because he wants Minneapolis to play host to the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2031.
Giant events always have concerns as they draw near, said Marc Ganis, a sports business consultant based in Chicago. But he thinks the Windy City missed a huge opportunity, blaming “incompetent political leadership.”
Ganis pointed out that prior to the last two World Cups, there were issues with Russian foreign policy and Qatar’s treatment of workers, yet those events wound up being seen as successful. “Once the games begin,” he said, “nobody will remember the problems.”
For now, though, the cities who opted out can take solace in knowing they never had to deal with those problems in the first place.
