‘United As One’? The collision of European, US, and state-run sport models at the 2026 World Cup

Introduction

Over the past few decades, two primary models of sport governance have emerged in the world: European and US. The European model is built around competition and community: major leagues involve promotion and relegation, and fans are broadly loyal to the team that has grown around their local area. The US model is centred on business: teams remain in the same league regardless of performance, the acquisition of new players is highly structured through drafts, and franchises have been known to relocate thousands of miles at the whim of the owner, an idea that seems utterly preposterous to most European sports fans.

In recent years, some have highlighted the rise of a third sport model, centred around authoritarian states using sport as a vehicle for soft power and sportswashing. These three models appear to be distinct both geographically and ideologically. However, this article argues that the three have been coming together throughout the past decade, as sport becomes a key playing field for global investment and soft power.

This collision of models will culminate in this summer’s World Cup hosted by the USA (alongside Mexico and Canada as co-hosts, but the tournament is clearly dominated by US narrative control whilst attempting to project a unified image). The tournament’s bid was centred around the slogan: ‘United As One’. This article argues that the 2026 World Cup has not in fact united the USA, Mexico and Canada, but instead united the three distinct sporting models of Europe, the US, and the state-run model.

The European sport model (ESM)

The main hallmark of the ESM in football is competitive leagues where clubs can (theoretically) grow from nothing to champions across the space of a few years. Clubs are deeply rooted in their communities, and protected by law. The ESM is broadly protected in the EU under Article 165 of the Treaty on the Function of the European Union (TFEU), mandating action aimed at “developing the European dimension in sport, by promoting fairness and openness in sporting competitions and cooperation between bodies responsible for sports”.[1]

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has generally been reluctant to infringe upon these ideas of fairness and openness – in the 2023 case of Royal Antwerp the ECJ ruled that UEFA regulations requiring eight ‘home-grown’ players in each 25 player squad for European competitions infringed upon Article 101 TFEU as anti-competitive behaviour. The Court established that such rules illegally restrict the recruitment of talented players from other Member States unless they can be specifically justified as necessary to encourage the local training of young athletes.[2] This enshrines a focus on sporting merit in the ESM compared to the more rigid restrictions and closed systems seen in many US leagues that obtain new players through draft systems.

Whilst the ESM has in the past relied upon clubs to uphold the model, the rise of more radical changes like the breakaway European Super League has led to an increased support for government intervention to protect the status quo of the ESM. The European Super League was an attempt by 12 top European football clubs to essentially apply the US sports model to Europe, with a closed-style league intended to bring greater profits to its members. [3]

Whilst the ECJ did ultimately find the European Super League breakaway attempt to be lawful,[4] the idea of a shift away from the ESM was so shocking to fans in Europe that the first club withdrew just 56 hours after the League was announced,[5] and all six planned Premier League clubs had withdrawn within 96 hours. This example shows the role of fans in the ESM: immediate concern and protests by fans triggered governmental action, with the UK’s Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden releasing a statement 24 hours after the initial League announcement that encapsulating the ESM. The statement mentioned economics and fans, “Football clubs aren’t just businesses; they define communities across the country”; it mentioned promotion and relegation, “This is a sport where a team like Leicester City can ascend from League One to the Premier League title in under a decade”, and it promised governmental action, “We are examining every option, from governance reform, to competition law, and the mechanisms that allow football to take place”.[6] This statement shows how important the premise of the ESM is considered to be in the UK.

Similar concerns were expressed in Spain (although the statement was less active in its opposition, stating only that “The government of Spain does not support the initiative”)[7] and France (a statement sitting somewhere between the UK and Spain, noting that the proposed League “threatens the principle of solidarity and sporting merit”, but only offering to “support all the steps taken by the LFP, FFF, UEFA and FIFA to protect the integrity of federal competitions”, rather than take active steps itself)[8].

Ultimately, the ESM has had to adapt over time and now increasingly relies on government action to protect it from external forces. Government action does not inherently change the model, but it does aim to safeguard it: the introduction of the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) in the UK aims to protect clubs’ community heritages and ensure financial stability is maintained where new owners are involved.

Despite its support amongst fans and governments, the ESM is not without it problems. A key concern of the model that does not prioritise economics is that it struggles for sustainability beyond the very top level of football. The promise of promotion is an essential part of the ESM, but it is also a weakness in that it drives drastic and often unsustainable spending levels, that cause financial issues if promotion is not achieved. This is the inherent contradiction of the ESM: relying on sporting merit and dynamic league can actually undermine competitiveness in the long term, trapping smaller clubs in cycles of financial instability whilst the top teams entrench their dominance. In comparison, the US model often involves salary caps and smaller leagues, creating a more level and secure playing field.

The US sport model (USSM)

The USSM frames sport as entertainment and as a vehicle for owner profit. The latter point is vastly different to the status quo in Europe, where the old adage goes: “the way to make a small fortune out of running a football club is to start with a large fortune”.[9] In contrast, US teams and leagues have consistently been able to extract more revenue from fans (a phrase that will send shudders up the backs of most European sports fans, but is seen as the price of professional sport in the US). By completely removing the threat of relegation, US franchises enjoy guaranteed television revenue shares and can operate with huge margins that ensure virtually every team remains profitable even despite any dips in on-field performance.

The relocation of AFC Wimbledon 50 miles away to become MK Dons in 2002 was a seismic moment in English football, and one that shows no signs of repeating itself any time soon.[10] In the US and Canada, more than 30 major professional sports teams have moved cities since 1950.[11] Examples of drastic moves include the Seattle SuperSonics’ move to Oklahoma (2008, NBA), and the (now LA) Rams who have been based in Cleveland (1936-45), LA (1946-94), St Louis (1995-2015) and LA again (2016-present). Franchise relocation generally comes in pursuit of profits, with little attention paid to the wants of longstanding fans.

The closed nature of the USSM also gives the franchises themselves far more leverage over their cities than the average football teams has in Europe. The near constant threat of relocation allows franchise owners to engage in ‘stadium rent-seeking’,[12] whereby local government are coerced into contributing huge amounts of public funding for new stadiums and facilities to maintain the presence of a franchise that itself is a huge economic contribution to the area. Because US leagues operate as cartels that artificially limit the supply of teams, owners can credibly threaten to abandon their host city for one of many other viable markets thousands of miles away.

US antitrust law has historically struggled to deal with these issues. When concerns have reached the courts, they have generally been found to be political choices, rather than market-based issues that can be legislated against. This allows billionaire owners to obtain public subsidies through opaque mechanisms like Tax Increment Financing (TIFs) or tax-exempt municipal bonds, resulting in massive wealth transfers from taxpayers to sports franchises, protecting owners but damaging everyday fans.[13]

Hence the USSM functions as a closed model that prioritises financial stability and growth. The model chooses economics over competitiveness and community, creating a more predictable (and arguably more long-term sustainable) system than the ESM, despite the risk of alienating fanbases.

The state-run sport model (SRSM)

The SRSM is primarily utilised by authoritarian states, who maintain complete control over the funding and governance of their sporting investments. The SRSM generally uses sport in two ways, and for different audiences. Sport can be used to gain soft power amongst either international or domestic audience, or for sportswashing (generally only internationally). The use of soft power in a sporting context can broadly be defined as “the ability to shape the preferences of others and align those preferences to your own”,[14] through the use of discursive rather than military or economic power. Sportswashing can be defined as “a phenomenon whereby political leaders use sports to appear important or legitimate on the world stage while stoking nationalism and deflecting attention from chronic social problems and human-rights woes on the home front”.[15]

Sport for soft power is of course not a new concept: in the Olympic movement it was utilised by Adolf Hitler in hosting the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and played a role in the tit-for-tat boycotts by the USA and USSR of the 1980 Moscow and 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Even as far back as the ancient Olympics in 416 BCE, it is believed that Athens made a high number of entries into the chariot race, and used their successes to distract from their struggles on the battlefield in war with Sparta, convincing Athenians to join the fight in an early example of using sport for domestic soft power.[16]

Over just the last decade, we have seen a huge rise in the use of sport for soft power. In football, there have been World Cups in Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022), the rise of football leagues with tremendous purchasing power in China (peaking in 2015-16 and last until around 2021) followed by Saudi Arabia (with major investment in the Saudi Pro League beginning in 2022). In Qatar, the 2022 Men’s World Cup exposed the severe limitations of global sports governance: the tournament appeared to operate in a legal and ethical vacuum without binding human rights obligations. FIFA allowed the tournament to proceed despite the well-documented deaths of thousands of migrant workers, only implementing reactive changes when faced with intense external and media pressure.[17]

Looking more broadly at Saudi Arabia, the country’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has never been more involved in global sport at all levels: it owns the majority of three Saudi Pro League football clubs, 85% of Newcastle United, has funded major sporting events across golf, F1 and tennis, and has more recently focused its investment on combat sports like boxing and the hosting of major global esports tournaments. The rapid expansion of Saudi investment in sport can be considered both use of sport for soft power and a prime example of sportswashing, as noted human rights organisations like Amnesty International, which condemned the PIF’s takeover of Newcastle United as “sportswashing, plain and simple”.[18] Newcastle’s players have recently travelled to warm-weather training camps on what is believed to be the same plane used to carry the group of Saudi assassins who allegedly killed the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.[19]

Whilst there has been a recent withdrawal from some areas of sports funding by the PIF (notably a reduced backing for LIV Golf, and a U-turn on Saudi Masters Snooker), these changes don’t negate the huge impact of Saudi investment on global sport so far. Their huge capital injections have already fundamentally altered global sports economics and governance, and the PIF’s long-term commitment to hosting and funding major tournaments for the world’s biggest sports shows no signs of slowing down (the nation is set to host its first football World Cup in 2034).

The SRSM has also had a knock-on effect on other sporting models. The UK’s new IFR recognises the risk of states using sport investment for soft-power or sportswashing under the SRSM, and has tried to mitigate against this risk through legislation. Section 37(2) of the UK’s Football Governance Bill proposes that IFR must take into account the UK government’s trade and foreign policy objectives when assessing prospective owners.[20] If such rules existed in October 2021 when the PIF began their takeover of Newcastle United, it seems likely that the attempt would have been blocked.

The UK risks violating Articles 14 and 15 of the FIFA Statutes with these rules, which strictly prohibit government interference in national member associations.[21] This possible violation by the UK is somewhat ironic, as FIFA’s rules do not directly legislate for state involvement in another state’s league, such as the Saudi ownership of Newcastle United and Qatari ownership of Paris Saint-Germain.

Furthermore, international federations like FIFA lack binding legal obligations to enforce human rights standards, often allowing state-run models to operate in a legal blind spot where reform is only triggered by external media or NGO pressure. FIFA President Giovanni Infantino has further enabled this by largely praising hosts operating under the SRSM, turning a blind eye to obvious political interference and treating state-involvement as business opportunities rather than enforcing any stringent ethical or legal requirements.

The 2026 World Cup: where worlds collide

The joint Canada-Mexico-US bid in 2018, was marketed around a core vision for the three hosts ‘United As One’, centred around economic certainty, sporting opportunity, and political unity. This unity has been dead in the ground for quite some time.

Firstly, despite the rhetoric of a three-state equal partnership, the tournament is controlled by the US, meeting many characteristics of the SRSM. The hosting of games has been heavily skewed towards the US, with the US hosting 78 of the 104 matches and all matches from the quarterfinals onward.[22] The US’s immigration policy has also repeatedly made headlines in the build-up to the tournament, with Somalian referee Omar Artan denied entry to the country at Miami International Airport. The dominance of the US in running the tournament was made more evident as Artan was not even able to only referee matches in Canada or Mexico – all referees must remain at a base in Miami for training when not refereeing matches.[23] Moreover, tickets that were meant to be issued to Iran’s Football Federation were unexpectedly revoked days before the World Cup, which Iran directly blamed on the US in the wake of the war between the two countries, despite it theoretically being an issue that could have stemmed from any of the three hosts.[24]

Whilst the tournament’s bid symbolically claimed to be a bid of unity, the action of President Trump throughout the bidding process showed that the SRSM has had a central role to play in this World Cup. Trump aggressively lobbied for the tournament through sending warning letters to FIFA, and even threatened political retribution against nations that refused to support the North American bid.[25] This approach effectively mimicked the SRSM’s strategy of using sports as a vehicle for aggressive nationalistic diplomacy and showing political strength.

Furthermore, the tournament has effectively co-opted the USSM approach of stadium rent-seeking, exploiting the legacy of a system where heavy local government costs have been passed on to paying fans. Stadiums are being rented by FIFA for a fixed sum, and profits are being diverted away from local governments and back to FIFA, meaning that local governments have been turning to increasing the prices that they can control to recoup huge costs. The New Jersey Transit train which will take fans to the NY/NJ stadium has increased prices from $12.90 return to $100, in order to pay for increased local costs, whilst official car park space have seen rates of over $175.[26] Compared to free transport offered to ticket holders in four of the last seven tournament, this World Cup is prioritising profit at the expense of fans, as is common in the USSM. As summarised by the BBC, “Whereas previous tournaments had large building costs paid for by taxpayers and borrowing, 2026 costs are instead being paid for by the attendees”.[27]

By utilizing 23 pre-existing, taxpayer-funded stadiums, the bid offered FIFA ultimate financial certainty without the construction scandals of Qatar, but it heavily relies on exploiting the infrastructure built through decades of US franchise extortion of fans.[28] Furthermore, it leaves local governments with little option other than to further extort fans to break even on a tournament that does not intend to share profit with them.

Ticket revenue per match is expected to increase nearly five-fold from Qatar 2022 to the 2026 tournament, emphasising the profit-first nature of the USSM. ‘Dynamic pricing’ models have been used in an attempt to extract maximum revenue from supporters, but has received significant backlash and ultimately contributed to thousands of empty seats being expected throughout the tournament, which will in turn reduce the estimated profit levels.

Alongside the aspects borrowed from the USSM and SRSM, aspects of this World Cup also intrinsically fall into the ESM. The projected $11 billion profit of the tournament fits within the USSM, but there are claims that this will be distributed in part back to the tournament’s nations.[29] For example, former US Soccer Federation President Carlos Cordeiro suggested that the tournament’s record-breaking revenues could lead to “$50mil more per association” globally. Furthermore, the 2026 bid mirrored the ESM’s collectivist and community-driven aims through its grassroots projects. The bid’s “Minutes from Soccer” program pledges $20 million to build and improve safe facilities for underserved populations, which includes the development of 2,026 mini-pitches across North America to align regional football development programmes.[30] By framing massive commercial windfalls as a charitable investment back into the local and global game, the tournament partially satisfies the redistributive ideals traditionally expected in the ESM.

Furthermore, looking beyond economics, this World Cup has at least maintained the sporting fairness principles of the ESM. As in previous World Cups, each nation except the hosts had to go through qualifying, and the group stages and knockouts theoretically offer the chance for any qualified nation to lift the trophy, based purely on their quality on the pitch.

The 2026 World Cup has therefore become a hybrid event of the three models: it centralises the profit-first focus and aggressive attitude towards public spending of the USSM, has utilised soft-power in the way of the SRSM, all whilst maintaining the open competition and grassroots support that are central to the ESM.

Conclusion

Successful sporting competitions are now borrowing selectively from the three models, combining US commercial predictability, European community appeal, and state-backed financial clout and narrative control. But why does all of this matter? I believe that the convergence of the three sporting models this summer does not mark the culmination of these models, but rather a fork in the road. The next two World Cups offer two fascinatingly different options: 2030 will be split across three continents, with the first three games in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay before a tournament across Spain, Portugal and Morocco. 2034, by contrast, will be in Saudi Arabia. 2030 at first glance appears to favour the European and US models, with six different hosts full of millions of football fans and decades of football history. 2034 is a textbook example of the rise of the SRSM, acting as the pinnacle of the Saudi sportswashing mission (perhaps only to be topped by a successful Olympic bid in 2036 or 2040).

So where next? Perhaps soon we will see the introduction of ‘auto-qualifiers’ for the World Cup beyond the host nations. The 2026 World Cup lacks the presence of China and India, two countries that account for over a third of the world’s population. As the World Cup lurches towards the USSM and SRSM, why wouldn’t the organisers want to maximise revenue by involving more of the world, not on sporting merit but on profit possibilities?

A move away from sporting merit in the tournament can already be seen through a very subtle change to the 2026 tournament. The top four nations in the FIFA rankings (Spain, Argentina, France and England) have been kept apart so that if each side wins their group, the semi-finals could theoretically be Spain v France and Argentina v England (1v3 and 2v4).[31] This is a minor change from previous years, but is perhaps a sign of FIFA’s yearning for profit: these would be very high profile games, and a last 16 or quarter-final match between the top ranked sides in the world is surely a less alluring prospect than a semi-final or final.

This is a small change, but where does it end? In 2030 or 2034, perhaps the top seeds will get a bye through the group stages, or auto-qualification? By engineering the knockout matches to ensure the biggest television ratings and protect its most lucrative nations from early elimination, FIFA can actively mimic the USSM’s prioritisation of entertainment and financial predictability. This calculated orchestration threatens to erode the uncertainty and the guarantee of equal opportunity that the ESM has repeatedly identified as essential characteristics of fair and open sporting competitions.

Ultimately, if a prioritisation of economics begins to override the application of pure sporting merit, the World Cup risks abandoning the very ideals that have historically justified its global appeal. FIFA and its stakeholders will be rich, but who will be left to watch it?

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:12008E165

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:62021CJ0680; https://www.linklaters.com/insights/blogs/sportinglinks/2024/january/the-cjeu-and-sport-revolution-evolution-and-arbitration

[3] https://www.chelseafc.com/en/news/article/club-statement4

[4] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:62021CJ0333

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/apr/20/timeline-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-european-super-league-in-two-days

[6] https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/statement-by-oliver-dowden-on-the-european-super-league

[7] https://www.news24.com/sport/spanish-government-does-not-support-new-european-super-league-20210419

[8] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/frances-macron-opposes-breakaway-european-super-league-2021-04-18/

[9] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200405/ldhansrd/vo041215/text/41215-19.htm

[10] http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/w/wimbledon/2012312.stm

[11] https://themich.org/2025/04/16/when-teams-leave-cities-behind/

[12] https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1120&context=faculty-articles