From Global Attention to Local Opportunity: Atlanta’s World Cup Challenge

Last weekend, the US hosted the world’s most watched sporting event, the FIFA World Cup final, following weeks of matches played throughout North America. As of this writing, official numbers for the 2026 World Cup tournament have yet to be released, but the last World Cup, held in Qatar in 2022, had an average of 175 million viewers per match and throughout the tournament engaged 5 billion people through television, streaming, and other forms of viewing or following the tournament.

With all that hype, we should expect an economic impact. Indeed, FIFA projected the tournament would add approximately $17 billion to the US GDP. That is a big number, but it is only about five hundredths of one percent of the US GDP. The economic impact of hosting the World Cup is much more significant for a country like Qatar, whose GDP was 235 billion USD in 2022, than it is for the US, with a GDP of nearly $32 trillion.

The impact is more significant for individual host cities within the US, where the World Cup does have the potential to move the needle for local economies. FIFA estimates the World Cup to have a local impact of more than $1 billion for its host cities. For some cities, the opportunity for just a fraction of those 5 billion fans to have eyes on their city is impact enough. The international exposure is likely to bring up-ticks in tourism and related spending for years to come. Cha-ching!

For larger cities that already boast a strong international reputation, the impact of an event like the World Cup must come through other means. Atlanta is an interesting case study. In 1996, when Atlanta hosted the Olympics, the city had a much more limited international reach and reputation than it does today. In a very real sense, the Olympics put Atlanta on the world map, and at final tally, the games’ economic impact on the city was an estimated $5 billion.

The story will almost certainly be different for the World Cup in Atlanta, and not just because it is a different type of event. In a report published before the Olympics began, University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth described three primary categories of lasting impact: “1) the creation of world class facilities; 2) national and international recognition of the city and state through extensive media exposure; and 3) community benefits including local volunteerism, job creation and training, youth and education programs, funding for community economic development projects, and cultural programs.”

Thanks to lasting impacts of the 1996 Olympics, only the third one of these categories is still a relevant growth opportunity for 2026 Atlanta. But Georgia Tech researchers challenge many predictions of the World Cup’s economic impact, noting that most of the profit from the event will flow to large corporations, not to Atlanta’s communities. They challenge us to consider the opportunity cost of the city’s investment in hosting the World Cup, asking what impact could have come from investments of those same dollars elsewhere. If the tournament is to have a lasting economic impact, Tech’s experts say it will come in improvements to infrastructure for moving people and resources throughout the city. Only time will tell whether Atlanta’s World Cup investments will translate into the types of improvements that have lasting effects for the communities that call the city home.

For some US cities, the 2026 World Cup may be what puts them on the map. For Atlanta, already a thriving internationally respected city, the impact of the tournament is less about having the world’s eyes on the city during the matches it hosts and more about what happens when the lights go out.

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Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.