The 2026 World Cup Not Being the World’s Cup: Investigating the Structural Inequalities of Football (Soccer) Governance

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Lee Chun Hei

May 14, 2026

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Inquiry-driven, this article reflects personal views, aiming to enrich problem-related discourse.

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I fell in love with football not because of the sophisticated tactics, nor Fabrizio Romano’s transfer updates. I fell in love because of what happens every four years: billions of people, regardless of race, language or religion, are all dissolved by one ball for ninety minutes.

“Football is the global sport,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said. This year, this belief is arriving in the United States. Forty-eight teams fighting for glory on American soil––that is the largest World Cup in history.

However, Trump’s travel bans and the ever-soaring ticket prices require asking who actually owns the sport.

From 2023 to 2026, FIFA’s Forward 3.0 gives away $8 million, a sum that is twice as much as the annual revenue for 96 member associations. This aid package creates a structural leverage: Supporting financially sound proposals generates higher income for FIFA, which the governing body then redistributes more funds to the member associations for football development. Over time, the increased economic dependence increases opportunity costs for these associations to cast votes based on factors beyond economic gains, resulting in the “money-vote trap,” a cycle sometimes misunderstood as simple vote-buying. This is evident in 2018, when Morocco rivalled Canada, Mexico and the US for the right to host the 2026 World Cup. FIFA inspectors flagged Morocco’s bid as “high (financial) risk” due to a lack of infrastructure.

Historically, it was common for member associations to vote for their own continental representative out of continental solidarity, greater qualification odds and logistical advantages during tournaments. Yet, 11 of 52 associations broke away from this voting pattern and instead supported the North American trio’s bid, which was widely believed to be capable of generating greater revenue. Notably, almost all those 11 member associations were among the lowest-ranked countries in both GDP and FIFA world rankings, except South Africa, which had tense relations with Morocco over the status of Western Sahara. While the correlation among economic standing, footballing status and vote patterns in World Cup bids is insufficient to prove that economics dictated voting decisions, it nonetheless suggests that the poorer associations are structurally inclined to trade politics for economics.

But the inequality extends beyond geopolitical differences into a structural challenge. Even if every member could vote freely, it would not matter because the options on the ballot are designed by those who serve FIFA’s commercial interests over sporting ones. In 2017, the Bureau of the Council outlined guidelines regarding the 2026 World Cup host nation bid, with infrastructure elements accounting for six out of nine criteria and commercial elements the remaining three. The lack of a fan access requirement was a choice that revealed the organization’s preference, whether intentional or not. Despite Donald Trump’s non-binding promise to Infantino in 2018 that all fans could access the tournament, the Bureau’s regulations contained no requirement for enforceable access guarantees. Fast forward to 2026, when Trump imposed full travel bans against 19 countries, FIFA had yet to make public statements to address the affected fans.

The most poignant story of this World Cup falls on Haiti: the Haitian Football Association supported the North American bid in 2018, only to find its own citizens banned from even entering the US eight years later. When the rules contain no protection for fans, silence is the result of a system that works exactly as it should. The profit-maximizing culture of FIFA is so deeply institutionalized that the priority of profit over people lies in the proposals before they are even decided on.

Inequality is entrenched within football governance because the football associations of poorer nations cannot meaningfully vote against proposals that serve FIFA’s financial interests, as the latter controls the funds these associations depend on. Even when they vote freely, the very proposals they debate are already predetermined by the metagoverning bureau whose evaluation criteria are structurally calibrated to prioritize the rich over the fans– the ones who, after all, love the game the most.

The underlying issue with today’s inequality is that the system works exactly as designed. It requires the Global South to vote in line with profit motives, but at the same time, it needs their exclusion from agenda-setting to protect commercial returns. The Haitian fans did not fall through the cracks of the system. Even though their country qualified for the World Cup this year, they are meant to be outsiders watching from their TVs and not participating in person.

Football could belong to everyone, but it belongs more to some than others.