Sunday at MetLife Stadium, Spain or Argentina will win the World Cup final.
But who are the financial winners? Will it be a boon or bust for New York?
It’s complicated.
With only one game left, sports economists say it’s unlikely the U.S. will enjoy the huge economic boom promised. At least not directly.
As a host, New York saw uneven gains. But there were immense corporate profits, with FIFA the biggest beneficiary.
The average ticket price for the final is the highest ever in the U.S. at $11,327 per TickPick. For perspective, Super Bowl LVIII in 2024 (Chiefs-49ers) had been the mark at $9,411, with Knicks-Spurs Game 3 the highest non-Super Bowl at $6,308.
Argentina-Spain will dwarf that.
But FIFA monetizes the event globally, with host cities and public entities forced to shoulder most of the financial risk. Local businesses like bars, hotels and restaurants got a short-term boost, but that ends after Sunday.
“Yeah, FIFA is a profit-maximizing organization. They’re all over it, no question about it. And that’s their right; they didn’t force us to host the games. We wanted to,” Dr. Mark Rosentraub — director of Michigan’s Center for Sports Venues & Real Estate Development — told The Post.
“In the absence of the World Cup, [New York] could get a huge number of visitors; and some visitors who were planning to come aren’t going to come during the World Cup because the prices are higher and it’ll be more crowds. So what we’re doing is replacing some oranges with bananas.”
New York hotels run over 90 percent occupancy in the summer, and Dr. Rosentraub opined that might hit 96 or 97 percent for the World Cup.
“But there’s a lot of substitution going on because we get a lot of tourists,” Rosentraub said. “This weekend in New York, there’s going to be thousands of Argentines, [but] I don’t know how many from Argentina there’ll be. We have people partying in Manhattan; it’ll be spectacular. But if they hadn’t played here, it would also be jammed this weekend in Times Square.”
Consumer spending is up; but costs for infrastructure, security and transportation were passed down to taxpayers.
“It’s big prestige,” Meadowlands Chamber of Commerce president James Kirkos had told The Post. “I don’t know that it’s a huge moneymaker for the stadium because it costs a lot to live up to the requirements FIFA puts in front of you in order to be that host.”
Bars filled up, with the Scots famously drinking Boston dry. But locally they’ve replaced regular tourists, keeping profits muted.
Price gouging in some cities backfired with l rates of 500 percent above average forcing hotels to slash prices. Lackluster bookings led the Hotel Association of New York City to halve its revenue expectations from $200 million to $100 million.
“They have to say what they have to say,” Dr. Rosentraub said. “The [profit] is not going to be what FIFA is telling you. But it’s all good. There’s nothing bad here. And what social media has done for the United States in the last month, that’s almost irreplaceable.
Every match of the FIFA World Cup will air on either FOX or FOX Sports 1. If you don’t have cable, you can take advantage of a DIRECTV free trial to stream it all.
Prefer to check out the action live and in person? Shop World Cup 2026 tickets on SeatGeek and make sure to use promo code NYPOST10 for $10 off purchases over $250 at checkout if you’re a first-time SeatGeek user.
“They won, we won. And that social impact of people talking about how great it was to be in America, that is invaluable. We could not have bought that if we wanted. That is [as big as] anything that we could imagine. … Anybody who minimizes that is really ignoring the real value of hosting the games.”
If there is a value, that may be it.
It may just be somewhere down the line.
“We said from the beginning that the World Cup belongs to New Yorkers. This summer, we proved it,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. “This summer, strangers became neighbors on Open Streets and in free fan fests across the city because government made room for people to come together.
“And long after the confetti is swept away, New Yorkers will keep what we built: safer streets, faster buses, stronger protections, closer neighbors and the memory of a summer when the whole world felt at home here.”
