Study of FIFA criteria for World Cup host cities finds KC is one of top U.S. candidates
FIFA is likely to decide next month which United States cities will serve as hosts for the 2026 World Cup, which also will be held in Canada and Mexico.
Eleven cities in the U.S. are expected to be a host city, and Kansas City is hoping to make the cut. Fox Sports sees Kansas City as the best choice in the Midwest, and a study of the host cities shows KC is ranked as the sixth-best option overall.
The commercial real estate listing service 42floors.com “analyzed a set of seven metrics that would allow us to better gauge the technical capabilities of each of the 17 U.S. cities that have placed bids to meet the organization’s selection criteria.”
Those metrics are: stadium capacity, fan fest venues, training facilities, hotels, broadcasting capabilities, public transit usage and airport passenger volume and distance from stadium. Each city was scored on each metric and could receive a maximum of 100 points for the seven combined.
Kansas City ranked first in Fan Fest venues and was the only city to received the full points in that category.
“In terms of sheer crowd capacity, Kansas City, Mo., blew the competition out of the water, picking up the 15-point maximum for this metric. Its two prospective Fan Fest locations — the ‘Historic Center’ (National World War I Museum and Memorial in downtown) and the ‘Cultural Center’ (Theis Park in midtown) — could sustain crowds of up to 370,000,” wrote the study’s author, Diana Sabau.
Also buoying Kansas City in the study: it ranked fifth in the stadium category based on games being played at Arrowhead Stadium.
Hurting Kansas City’s cause, the study said, was public transportation and the airport.
The new terminal at Kansas City International Airport will undoubtedly help, but the distance to Arrowhead Stadium was seen as a big negative.
Public transit was defined in the study as “the percentage of public transportation usage in a metropolitan statistical area. Values scored were based off 2019 American Community Survey Reports by the U.S. Census.”
But the bottom line is only five cities scored higher than Kansas City as a potential World Cup host city: New York/New Jersey, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta and the Bay Area/San Francisco.
This story was originally published March 4, 2022 at 9:34 AM.
