The extravaganza in the spotlight is the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, and its venues will be North American. Canada, Mexico, and the USA will provide a diverse setting for 48 national teams and over 100 stadium-filling matches.

Now, you may not follow soccer or think much about sports in general, but “The United Bid”, as it is called, is a massive win for the three nation’s economies, but mostly for the United States, which will host all but 20 of the games. 

This festival of sport, with hundreds of thousands of colorful supporters visiting, could produce “staggering revenues of $14 billion”* for the host nations and provide “as much as $50 million more in distributions to each member nation than if the alternative bid [from Morocco had] prevailed”*. 

(A note here -- FIFA’s acceptance of The United Bid seems free from corruption, from this writer’s perspective.  Yes, the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2016 indictments and recent prosecution of FIFA’s leaders has helped, after previous decades saw bribery as a standard among well-placed “football power brokers”. As should be obvious, even the least corrupt companies or places in the world still require good governance!)