A version of the following commentary appeared in The Kansas City Star on January 23, 2026.
There are clear opportunities: international exposure, showing off our neighborhoods, hosting visitors from around the world and even watching soccer (I guess). But they come at a cost, paid with tax dollars from all levels of government. And there are risks.
Several media outlets reported that hosting the games in Kansas City would bring a $653 million economic impact. That’s a big number, and potentially a big benefit. But tracking down how that figure was calculated led me on a bit of a chase. Journalists who repeated the claim said they got it from other published reports. One pointed to testimony by Lindsey Douglas, chief operating officer of KC2026, the host committee, before the Kansas Legislature. But no journalist vetted the claim.
Emails to KC2026 and the Kansas City Sports Commission remain unanswered. An email to the public relations firm handling the event directed me to VisitKC, the tourism bureau. VisitKC, in turn, told me the numbers were generated by Destinations International, a trade association and advocacy group of destination marketing organizations such as convention centers and tourism bureaus. That association is neither independent nor disinterested — its job is to serve its members by producing flattering studies.
Sound familiar? A few years ago, the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City hired a trade group to show how incentives help the economy. The report was garbage.
These reports are like asking Big Tobacco to measure the health risks of smoking. Be skeptical.
The problem isn’t just that Destinations International is biased — its numbers are also deliberately indecipherable. The “Economic Impact Calculator” it uses claims to draw on multiple data sources and input-output modeling to estimate visitor spending and broader economic effects. However, the organization does not publicly disclose the full list of sources or its underlying assumptions, such as regional multipliers or average attendee spending by category. The detailed methodology — including model specifications, treatment of displacement effects and the influence of geographic boundaries — is proprietary. Destinations International did not reply to inquiries about how it computes its data.
It’s a black box — an algorithmic oracle whose judgments are trusted by people with no idea how it works.
Luckily, we don’t need to rely on advocacy groups. Independent studies have examined the World Cup’s economic benefits to host cities. In 2018, economist Victor Matheson concluded: “The results generally show that the observed impact of the World Cup has been a fraction that touted by the event boosters, and frequently the observed impact has actually been negative. Evidence of long-run economic impact has also been elusive.”
A 2010 study by Stefan Szymanski concluded that the economic effects of hosting the World Cup are negligible, except in the year in which the event takes place, wherein it appears “economic growth declines rather than increases.”
A 2003 Clemson University study looked at the 1994 World Cup, hosted in the United States, and found something shocking: Instead of the promised $4 billion boost, host cities lost between $5.5 and $9.3 billion.
Importantly, these independent studies examined the impacts using data after the events took place, whereas claims by trade groups such as Destination International make their predictions beforehand. Szymanski puts the differences bluntly: “There is a substantial literature in economics explaining why the economic impact of major events is likely to be quite small. There is also a substantial industry in generating large estimates of economic impact.”
Too often, elected leaders want to tell us that big public investments such as downtown ballparks, streetcars, entertainment districts and convention centers will not only make us better — they make us richer. As we’ve learned in Kansas City, that’s usually untrue.
Perhaps politicians won’t ever stop making grand predictions about the benefits of their proposals. Journalists should hold them accountable, and many do when it comes to the claimed economic benefits of sports stadiums. The public needs to be more skeptical of the promises they’re being sold.
Kansas City hosting the World Cup may be a worthwhile expense — but it should be understood as exactly that: an expense.