ATLANTA — Just over 24 hours ago, FIFA officials announced Atlanta will host eight World Cup matches, including a semifinal in 2026. The world cup which outpaces the Olympics in terms of global reach and attendance will be unlike anything the City of Atlanta has ever hosted.
The president of the Atlanta Sports Council, Dan Corso, compared the sports event to hosting multiple Super Bowls at once, leading impacted industries to start their preparations years in advance.
Ashley Svarney, Public Relations Director for Lowes Atlanta Hotel, said they are already preparing for what they expect to be the “biggest sporting event in Atlanta history.”
“There will be some enhancements made to the hotel... Maybe a refresh to the restaurant. Even though this world cup is still two years away, preparations are already underway,” added Svarney.
A Boston Consulting Group impact analysis estimates that the World Cup could contribute approximately $415 million in net economic benefit to Atlanta.
However, sports economists, such as Victor Matheson, author of Economics of the Super Bowl: Players, Performers, and Cities, anticipate each game to generate tens of millions of dollars.
He added the costs should be relatively low to put the event on compared to other major global events like the Olympics.
“We don’t have a great deal of evidence that mega events like this typically generate a gigantic amount of economic impact,” said Matheson. “But we do have some pretty good evidence that they generated a lot of fans’ interest.”
Matheson says just like sports, there are wins and losses whenever hosting events to this magnitude. He believes the businesses expected to gain the most profit will be retail, hotels, and restaurants. While the losers in all of this will be those ultimately stuck with the cost of safety, transportation and cleanup.
“Fans need to be transported. They need to be cleaned up after they need to be protected. So there are definite costs associated with this. And there are these costs will be in the millions for every game,” explains Matheson.
The last comparable large-scale sporting event that Atlanta hosted was the Super Bowl in 2019. According to the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the city earned about $200 million, but it came with an estimated $46 million cost. Matheson says the World Cup will undoubtedly outpace those numbers.
