Hand a country the largest sporting event ever held on its soil, in a year its inbound visitors fell, and measure what happens. That was the 2026 World Cup. Living Lab measured the World Cup 2026 economic impact per hotel, per city and per route.
International arrivals to the United States fell 4.2% in 2025 while worldwide travel grew about 4%. Inbound visits declined to 68.3 million, against 79 million in 2019, on policy rather than weather: visa suspensions, border checks, tariff sentiment. Into that came the World Cup, 78 of 104 matches on American soil. It is the first such experiment measured on one method across every host.
On its own terms, the event performed. Attendance reached 6.81 million against a projection of about 6.5 million. Ticket demand ran at roughly 30 times capacity. The international component followed its own path: four in five host-city hotels reported bookings below projection, and European advance bookings for July were 15.3% down on the prior year. The tournament proved the hosting capability.
The demand has not come back even under the strongest incentives, so we treat it as the new normal.
The published pre-tournament forecast put host-city room rates up 7 to 25%. Living Lab measured each market on per-hotel fixed effects and found the upside on both sides of the band. Miami booked 382,025 tournament room nights with a rate premium of 30.3%. Dallas booked 491,175 at 19.8%. New York booked the most room nights of any host, 537,655, at its usual June rate. A national average of plus 13% would have told all 16 cities the same thing. The per-hotel view told each one where its upside was.
Set the tournament beside a full year of US business events, measured on one method, and the comparison is close on most measures. The calendar produced about US$827m of economic contribution and US$194m in state and local taxes, every year. The tournament produced about US$968m and US$227m, once. Measured the same way, a government can see what each is worth and price the next bid. It can run the calendar and the events as one portfolio that compounds.
On 13 June, Scotland played Haiti at Gillette Stadium. Around 50,000 Scottish supporters travelled. Boston’s bars sold beer at roughly four times the volume of a Fourth of July weekend, and some ran dry. Origin-market data, flight bookings into Boston, and hotel occupancy for the match week were all visible weeks ahead. That is absorptive capacity, and the same concept explains a Grand Prix town whose guests slept in the next city.
A one-off event proves hosting capability once, while the ordinary calendar pays every year. A country that measures both can grow both. Measure per hotel, per event and per route: the cities that gained 30% show what the premium depends on. The binding constraint decides the strategy: beds in one city, air access in another, calendar size in a third. Name it before the bid and the bid has a case to win on. Living Lab measured this in 2026. A national government can now have the same measures before the decision rather than after it. The full paper, The test was the World Cup, is in the white papers. For further reading, see the OECD Recommendation on Global Events and Local Development and the US Travel Association forecast.
Before the next bid, have three things on the table: a per-hotel measure of the current calendar, a demand scenario for the event with the counterfactual stated, and a named binding constraint.
Hamburg, Rome and Budapest pulled out of the 2024 race. This time the field is full, and each bidder can build its case on what it has already hosted.
Oman has announced plans for a high-altitude destination at Jabal al Akhdar, combining sports training, wellness, and tourism at 2,400 metres. It is the kind of project a Gulf government can commit to at once, and the kind that lives or dies on a demand case nobody has yet published.
A major event is a rallying point for civic pride, and just as easily a rallying point for protest. The difference is usually whether residents can see what the event does for their street, in terms they recognise, before the road closures start.
Manchester United’s proposed stadium is a £2bn, 100,000-seat ground by Foster + Partners, with a target opening of 2030-31. The club and the regeneration case cite £7.3bn a year for the economy and 92,000 jobs. Those are the promoters’ projections. Here is what to test before believing them.
The owners of the Bulls and the Blackhawks are putting a reported US$7bn into 55 acres around the United Center: housing, a music hall, a hotel, retail, a park. The arena already hosts more than 200 events a year. The question a developer should ask is what the other 165 nights are worth.
At the Italian Grand Prix, the fleet of guest vehicles arrives on German plates with German drivers. The hospitality guests do not sleep in Monza, which hosts the race. They sleep in Milan, which does not. The town that pays captures a fraction of what the event generates.
