The World Cup Is Getting Bigger. That's Not Necessarily Better.
The Numbers Everyone's Ignoring
104 matches. 48 teams. 16 groups. These are the headline figures FIFA wants you to focus on for the 2026 World Cup. What they're not highlighting? The potential dilution of quality, the logistical nightmare facing the three North American host nations, and the fundamental restructuring of a tournament format that has worked exceptionally well for decades. When FIFA President Gianni Infantino says, "The expanded format will be a challenge, but it will also create more opportunities for teams to compete on the global stage," he's only telling half the story. The challenge part deserves more scrutiny than the opportunity part.
Let's talk about what's actually happening here. The 2026 World Cup, hosted jointly by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, will expand from the current 32-team format to 48 teams. Instead of 8 groups of 4 teams, we'll have 16 groups of 3 teams. The number of matches will balloon from 64 to 104. The top two teams from each group will advance to a new round of 32. These are the mechanics of the expansion, but what's the business model behind it? More games means more broadcast revenue, more ticket sales, more sponsorship opportunities. But at what cost to the product itself?
I've seen this pattern before in tech: growth at all costs, scale as the primary metric of success, expansion prioritized over quality. It rarely ends well. The question no one seems to be asking is: does football's premier international tournament actually need to be 50% bigger? And what happens to the prestige of qualification when nearly a quarter of FIFA's 211 member associations can participate?
Three Teams Per Group: A Mathematical Mess
Here's where things get particularly problematic. The shift to three-team groups creates a fundamental issue with the tournament structure. In a four-team group, each team plays three matches, and all teams in the group complete their matches simultaneously, reducing the risk of collusion. With three-team groups, the final match could become a calculation rather than a competition, with both teams knowing exactly what result they need to advance.
This isn't theoretical. We've seen this problem before. Remember the infamous "Disgrace of Gijón" at the 1982 World Cup, when West Germany and Austria played out a mutually beneficial result? FIFA's solution was to ensure final group games are played simultaneously. That's impossible with three-team groups. The potential for arranged results isn't just a cynical prediction – it's a mathematical certainty given the format.
Former US Men's National Team coach Jürgen Klinsmann acknowledged the complexity, stating, "The 2026 World Cup draw is a hugely important event, as it will determine the groups and matchups for the first-ever 48-team World Cup." What he didn't mention is that the draw will be setting up a fundamentally flawed group stage structure. The retention rate of competitive integrity is questionable at best.
Then there's the issue of teams playing only two group matches instead of three. For nations that have fought years to qualify, potentially traveling thousands of miles with thousands of supporters, to be eliminated after just 180 minutes of football seems almost cruel. The economics for fans don't work either – all that expense for potentially just two matches?
The Host Nations' Burden
Let's talk about the hosts. "This is a huge moment for New Jersey and the entire region, as we get to showcase our world-class facilities and passionate fan base to the world," says Phil Murphy, Governor of New Jersey. What he's not mentioning is the enormous strain this expanded tournament will place on infrastructure, security, and resources across three countries.
The United States, Canada, and Mexico will need to accommodate 16 more teams than Qatar did in 2022. That means 16 more training facilities, 16 more team base camps, 16 more security details, and thousands more traveling supporters. The tournament will require more hotels, more transportation, more everything. And with 104 matches instead of 64, the environmental impact will be significantly larger as well.
Carlos Cordeiro, US Soccer President, frames it positively: "The 2026 World Cup will be a historic event, not just for the sport, but for the entire North American region." Historic, yes. But at what cost? The unit economics of hosting have always been questionable – most economic impact studies of major sporting events show the benefits are typically overstated and the costs understated. Now multiply those questionable economics by 1.5.
The expanded format means more matches in more cities, stretching resources thinner. The logistics of moving 48 teams across three massive countries presents challenges that no previous World Cup has faced. The carbon footprint alone should raise eyebrows in an era of increased climate consciousness. But FIFA's growth model doesn't seem to account for these externalities.
Quality Dilution: The Unspoken Concern
Now for the question FIFA really doesn't want asked: What happens to the quality of play when you add 16 more teams to the tournament? The World Cup has thrived as the pinnacle of international football precisely because qualification is difficult. It's elite by design. The best teams in the world competing at the highest level.
With 48 teams, nearly one in four FIFA member nations will participate. That's a dramatic shift in the exclusivity that has defined the tournament. Will matches between the 47th and 48th best teams in the world deliver the quality that World Cup audiences expect? The evidence from expanded tournaments in other sports suggests otherwise.
Jürgen Klinsmann hints at this concern when he says, "The expanded World Cup will be a logistical challenge, but it also presents an exciting opportunity to showcase the sport to a wider audience." The wider audience part is key to FIFA's business model – more viewers, more revenue. But at what point does expanding the audience come at the expense of the product they're watching?
The retention rate for casual fans who tune in to watch mismatches in the early stages is likely to be poor. And while there's value in giving more nations the experience of a World Cup, there's also value in maintaining the tournament as the absolute elite level of international competition. The gap between these competing values is where the real tension lies.
Following the Money
Let's be honest about what's driving this expansion: revenue. More matches means more broadcast hours to sell, more tickets to sell, more sponsorship inventory to sell. FIFA projects significantly increased revenue from the expanded format. But who actually benefits from this additional revenue? And is it worth potentially compromising the tournament's quality and competitive integrity?
The World Cup is FIFA's primary revenue generator, funding everything from development programs to administrative costs. More money isn't inherently bad if it's properly reinvested in the game. But the model of endless expansion has limits, and we may be approaching them.
What's particularly concerning is that this expansion comes at a time when the football calendar is already overcrowded. Players at top clubs already compete in too many matches, risking burnout and injury. Adding more World Cup matches to the mix only exacerbates this problem. The unit economics might work for FIFA, but do they work for the players who are the actual product?
What Could Actually Work
To be fair, not everything about the expansion is problematic. Creating more opportunities for nations that have historically struggled to qualify has merit. Football is a global game, and the World Cup should reflect that global nature. The question is whether this particular expansion model is the right approach.
A more measured expansion – perhaps to 40 teams with 10 groups of 4 – might have preserved more of the tournament's competitive integrity while still creating new opportunities. Alternatively, strengthening continental tournaments and creating more cross-confederation competitions could have provided more meaningful international matches without diluting the World Cup itself.
The 2026 World Cup will be a fascinating experiment. If it succeeds – if the matches are competitive, the logistics work smoothly, and the tournament maintains its prestige – then FIFA will have proven the skeptics (including me) wrong. But if we see group stage mismatches, logistical nightmares, and a general sense that the tournament has lost some of its special quality, then hard questions will need to be asked about the growth-at-all-costs model.
The business of football continues to expand, but sustainability – both in the economic and sporting sense – requires more than just getting bigger. It requires getting better. The 2026 World Cup will show us which direction FIFA has chosen.