The Chicago mayor who said ‘no’ to the World Cup – a dome on Soldier Field was the last straw

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For Rahm Emanuel, the dome proved to be the final straw.

Emanuel was the 55th Mayor of Chicago between 2011 and 2019. During his final years in office, he made a decision that distinguished him from many peers across the United States: he said ‘no’ to FIFA and ‘no’ to the men’s World Cup.

Canada, Mexico and the United States came together under the umbrella of the ‘United’ bid, which eventually defeated competition from Morocco to be awarded hosting rights for the 2026 tournament. Host cities largely vied for a place. Yet in March 2018, three months before the ‘United’ bid secured victory, they encountered a surprise withdrawal.

Chicago appeared to be a perfect location for a World Cup host city. It has the third-largest population in the United States. It is well-connected and usefully positioned for a tournament spanning 16 cities and three countries. It boasts an iconic venue, Soldier Field, which sold out at a capacity of 63,636 for the USMNT’s final pre-World Cup send-off game against Germany on Saturday. It has teams in all the major U.S. professional sports leagues. It hosted six games when the U.S. last hosted the men’s World Cup in 1994, including an opening ceremony that featured Oprah Winfrey and that penalty by Diana Ross, and it hosted games at the Women’s World Cup in 1999.

Yet when Mayor Emanuel scrutinized FIFA’s hosting agreement, he turned away. For the uninitiated, FIFA’s model permits soccer’s world governing body to claim the vast bulk of revenue from ticketing, broadcasting, sponsorship, concessions and car parking, which is partly why the organization has projected more than $11 billion from this summer’s World Cup alone. The cities carry the financial burden for public transportation, safety, security and protection, including medical services, fire protection, police and even VIP escorts for anyone that FIFA declares worthy of the honor.

In return, FIFA executives talk up the positive economic impact of the World Cup. President Gianni Infantino has regularly cited a report claiming the U.S. economy would gain $30 billion by hosting the tournament but with its opening match taking place on June 11, several cities, seeing slow uptake on travel and hotels, privately fear they may not make back their investments.

In an interview with The Athletic, Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama, an advisor to President Bill Clinton and a potential 2028 candidate for the Democratic Party, said he had serious concerns as “the representative of Chicago’s taxpayers” in 2018.

The way he saw it, he was being asked to take on all the risk, while FIFA took home the rewards.

“We were on the front end of the bad side and the back end of the good side,” he says. “I said, ‘I don’t know what any other mayor or governor is doing, but do you expect me to treat the Chicago taxpayers as the dumb money at the table? You’ve got to be kidding me!’”

The host city proposal came with further risks. “They said in the contract that they had the right to request a dome being built over Soldier Field (the venue is open). So I said: ‘You have got to take that out.’

“They go, ‘We never exercise it, but it’s something we ask everybody to include.’ I said, ‘I don’t care if you’ve never exercised it. There will always be a first. Take it out and we can work through the other issues.’ They said, ‘We can’t take it out.’

“So I said there is not a chance I am going to have you directing me on a $50 million-$100 million expense to the taxpayers. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. You can’t have something in there that leaves the city and the taxpayers exposed, where (FIFA) gets to decide it and I have no vote in it.”

Soldier Field is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places, meaning any substantial changes to the structure would require special permissions.

In an interview with The Athletic last fall, Chicago Sports Commission’s executive director Kara Bachman said that the deal transferred a financial burden to the city to the extent it risked “leaving us in debt.” Chicago also had reservations about FIFA’s restrictive sponsorship categories, which do not allow host cities to make partnerships with any sponsors who may be deemed in conflict with FIFA’s own. There was also concern about FIFA’s expectations for cities (at that time) to fund free transportation for World Cup ticket-holders and hold a free FIFA Fan Fest — a festival for fans to watch games — throughout the tournament.

As the World Cup approached, all these challenges have stormed into public view elsewhere: Some cities have reneged on their Fan Fest obligations, while others buckled under the costs of the World Cup, transferring expensive transit fares to fans instead.

Soldier Field hosted the United States’ 2-1 defeat by Germany on June 5. (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)

Emanuel smiles: “I remember they said, ‘This will be great marketing for the city.’

“I said, ‘I don’t need you for marketing.’ We had the NFL draft in 2015 and 2016! So I said, ‘I don’t need you. You think Chicago needs (FIFA) for marketing? Not happening.’

“I can’t monetize marketing. I said, ‘You (FIFA) are taking cash and I get a marketing dollar of some intrinsic value?’ I just said, ‘I don’t know who you talk to, who you negotiate with, but I’m not doing that. That is not a deal.’ I’m not the smartest businessman but I’ve passed 8th grade math and the numbers don’t work.”

The irony is that Emanuel had been a mayor who liked to bring sports events to Chicago. He was in place when the NFL draft left New York for the first time in 50 years, heading to Chicago in 2015 and 2016. In 2017, Chicago hosted the NHL draft and, in the same year, the city secured the NBA All-Star Game for 2020. A year earlier, Chicago hosted a memorable rugby union international between Ireland and New Zealand’s All Blacks. Emanuel says it was a deliberate policy to drive Chicago’s economy by hosting sports events.

He was no hater of soccer. Indeed, he says he first took up ballet — Emanuel trained at the Evanston School of Ballet in Illinois — to improve his soccer game as a teenager. He also believed Chicago was an ideal location to host World Cup games.

“Due to the airport, the hotel range, the capacity and being a city that does big things — Chicago’s held more political conventions than any other city — you put all that together, our strong Eastern European and Central and Latin American communities, this was a perfect city.”

But when Emanuel assessed FIFA’s asks, further questions were raised. For example, FIFA, he says, wanted a waiver on the sales tax on tickets sold during the tournament, a request that would be granted by Missouri, Georgia and Florida to enhance their cities’ chances of hosting. In Chicago, however, Emanuel had already opposed taxpayer subsidies for sports venues owned by billionaires, which brought disagreements with the owners of the Chicago Bulls, Blackhawks and Cubs.

“There was a year-long standoff between myself and the Ricketts family, the owners of the Cubs, over Wrigley Field. I would not give any taxpayer money. Forget about it. If you overpaid, that’s your problem. I said they could monetize on X, Y, and Z. But people knew (where I stood) when it came to taxpayer money and sports teams.”

He continues: “Cities and states who are sitting there throwing money at sports teams are out of their mind. We never did it.

“The idea that I would waive either an amusement tax or the sales tax for FIFA was a non-starter. Having said I’m not doing it (for sports teams in Chicago), if then I went backwards, that would have created its own domestic turmoil in the city — given I was such a hard ass about the other ones.”

Technically, Chicago did sign the contract but they did so, cheekily, in a manner they knew FIFA would not accept. FIFA’s representatives made clear that no redlining would be accepted within the signed documents, so Chicago signed a blemish-free version of the contract but then added an asterisk below the line listing all of Chicago’s pending concerns and conditions.

“There were one or two calls afterwards,” Emanuel says. “‘What do you mean you’re ‘done’? Do you want to reconsider? Or what if we did this?’ During the negotiation, we were trying to get to a yes.

“Between my desire to build Chicago as a world-class host of sporting events, and my commitment to a set of economic principles that I was never going to violate — which is not to allow taxpayers to be treated as the dumb money at the table — my desires were in conflict.”

He says he faced no lobbying from within the city to oppose the decision, saying hotel owners were content with the rise of tourism in Chicago through sports, theatre, the arts and the culinary world. “The hotel owners and restaurant owners trusted me,” he says. “Nobody was saying you gotta do this.”

As the World Cup looms, stories about FIFA’s unprecedentedly high ticket prices abound. President Trump recently said he “would not pay it either” when asked about lagging sales for the U.S.’ opener against Paraguay, for which the three main categories of tickets were priced at over $1,000 per seat.

Would Emanuel pay those prices? “Let me just answer it this way: I haven’t ordered one. Take whatever conclusion you like from that.”

But does he now look back with any regret, or allow himself a smirk when he observes the chaos engulfing other host cities?

“I’m hoping it’s a success,” he insists. “I don’t wish ill on any mayors or governors. For a lot of them, this got negotiated before they actually put their hand on the Bible. I’m hoping they are great games and everybody succeeds. There’s no, ‘I get to spike the ball on the 30-yard line and say, “I told you so.”’

“That said…,” he grins. “Do I think we did the right thing as a steward of the city’s future and of taxpayer dollars? Yes.

“If the average ticket price (for the U.S.’ opener) now is $1,000, you’re going to have average homeowners and apartment dwellers subsidizing a game and taking 100 percent of the risk for a ticket that they could never afford. Who does that deal?

“If you are a resident in Pilsen or in Little Village, just to use two predominantly Mexican-American communities in the city of Chicago… you’re supposed to be on the hook financially for a game but not be able to afford to go unless you take out a payday loan? Give me a break. Not a chance.”