Before the tournament kicked off, the consensus take on the 2026 FIFA World Cup was mostly logistical dread. Sixteen host cities across three countries, visa backlogs, transit strain, security theater at a scale the U.S. had never attempted. Instead, the money is showing up.
Jorge Mas, the managing owner and CEO of Inter Miami CF, went on Fox Business’s The Bottom Line this week to lay out what the ledger actually looks like now that group play is well underway. His read, backed by Bank of America card data cited in the segment, is that the pre-tournament worry priced in a disaster that never arrived.
The spending surge nobody predicted
Start with the core number from the segment. Consumer spending across the 16 U.S. host cities is up 6.3% versus a year ago, with out-of-town visitor spending surging nearly 17%. That gap between local and visitor spending is where the story lives. The surge belongs to visitors. Foreign fans are landing, eating, drinking, and sleeping in hotels at rates the host cities have not seen since pre-pandemic peaks.
Put that against the macro backdrop and it looks stranger still. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index printed 44.8 in May 2026, deep in pessimistic territory and a fresh 12-month low from the 61.7 reading in July 2025. Domestic consumers are gloomy. Yet recreation services spending climbed from 813.9 billion in May 2025 to 862.3 billion in May 2026, and food services spending followed a similar path. A tournament full of paying foreigners is a very effective workaround for a bad sentiment print.
The broader growth picture supports the read. Real GDP grew 2.1% in the first quarter of 2026, with personal consumption at just 0.5%. The activity is coming from abroad. Tourists with dollars converted from euros, pesos, and reais are driving it.
A sea of yellow and 8 million visas
Mas described attending the Colombia versus Portugal match at Hard Rock Stadium, where he estimated roughly 80% of the crowd were Colombia fans, a sea of yellow filling the stands. That detail matters because it explains the spending surge in one image. Those fans flew in from abroad. They booked rooms and stayed for the run of matches their team plays.
“I know there was over 8 million visas given for people to come to the tournament, to visit our country,” Mas said on the Fox Business segment. “I think it has blown every single expectation that we had out of the water.”
Eight million visas is not a rounding error. It is closer to the population of a mid-sized European country arriving in staggered waves across the calendar, each visitor spending on flights, lodging, food, merchandise, and match tickets. The tournament also happens to overlap with the United States 250th anniversary, which adds a second layer of tourism marketing that host cities are happily stacking on top.
What it means for U.S. soccer’s future
Mas framed his broader thesis simply. “Football is a religion around the world. We are the centerpiece of that now during this tournament and during this world cup,” he said. He expects a pre-World Cup and post-World Cup era for the sport in America, with domestic fans following the stars they discover on television back into MLS stadiums after the final whistle.
There is already a proof of concept. Inter Miami games ranked fifth among the most-attended U.S. stadium events, ahead of the Super Bowl, a data point that would have sounded absurd five years ago. Mas expects an influx of superstar players into MLS after the tournament as they draft off the exposure.
For investors watching the consumer economy, the takeaway is narrower and more useful. A single event can override a weak sentiment reading if the spending is imported rather than domestic. Watch the Bank of America host-city data through July for whether the 17% visitor spending pace holds into the knockout rounds. That is where the disaster-turned-boom narrative either compounds or fades.
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