Houston’s 2026 FIFA World Cup Bid

THE ENERGY CAPITAL OF THE WORLD: HOUSTON’S 2026 FIFA WORLD CUP BID WITH SUSTAINABLE LEGACY AT THE HEART

With the 2026 FIFA World Cup scheduled to be hosted across the United States, Canada and Mexico, the biggest challenge for organisers of the biggest sporting event in the world is to choose the 16 host cities out of the numerous ambitious bids competing across North America. Chris Canetti, President of the Houston 2026 World Cup Bid Committee, outlines what makes Texas’ largest city an ideal host, their environmental sustainability efforts, and the economic impact that the tournament will bring.

What makes Houston the ideal host city for the 2026 World Cup?

There are a lot of things that go into it but in general we’ve got everything, and that’s our strength across the board. We are the fourth largest city in the United States, we are the largest city in Texas, and we have an array of world-class infrastructure – from two international airports to hotel and convention centres to the NRG stadium where the matches will be played, to world class practice facilities and training pitches. We have all the infrastructure in place to be able to host a major event like this.

We have got a track record for hosting sporting events like this. Houston has hosted more major sporting events than any other host candidate city since 2004, so we’ve been there and done that with Super bowls, NCAA college basketball Final Fours final fours and major All-Star games – even a tonne of soccer matches. With our infrastructure, track record and history we really have all these great things going.

Houston is also most diverse city in North America, so when you are bringing an international event such as the World Cup, for the global game, to have an international city that is so diverse with many different languages spoken and very rich in culture is important.

I should also say our accessibility and our location are an advantage to us as well. Houston is an extremely easy place to get to internationally. With our airport system, we are connected to every inhabited continent with direct flights and the most direct flights to south and central America, where a lot of international world cup fans will come in from. Once you’re here in Houston for the World Cup, we are centrally located in North America: You can get to New York in a couple of hours, you can get to LA in a couple of hours and of course there will be matches in Mexico, which you can get to in less than two hours in some cases, so our location is ideal for many reasons.

All these things add up to making Houston an ideal place to host a FIFA World Cup.

With a huge focus on environmental sustainability within sporting events, how are you looking to reduce your carbon footprint when hosting the World Cup?

The Houston 2026 World Bid Cup Committee has been in existence since January 2019 and very early on in that process we decided to make our focus on legacy. Our legacy strategy is why all these things add up to making Houston an ideal city to host a FIFA World Cup based on how we are going to grow the game in our area and beyond, how we are going to focus on human rights issues, and how we are going to focus on sustainability issues.

We have sub-committees as part of our bid committee that are very focused on these three pillars, with a group of experts on the sustainability task force working on how we are going to reduce the carbon footprint throughout the competition. We have got a great track record of doing this through other events in our city but obviously as this continues to evolve and become a bigger deal. With technological developments, we need to be at the forefront of that. Houston is, as you know, the energy capital of the world, therefore most of the major energy➡

companies have their headquarters here. Some of those sit on my board and they are all engaged with me on sustainability. These companies are going to be the ones that create a green plan going forward. They are all side by side with me working on our sustainability plans. We don’t have specific things down yet, but we have done some initiatives with various groups, and I have the infrastructure in place to act quickly to put together a great plan around sustainability, should we be successful with the bid.

Furthermore, we are not building any new venues as all the stadia and the training pitches already exist. We will be making minor modifications and improvements to them to get them up to the World Cup quality, but we are not talking about anything significant.

What is the soccer culture in Houston?

Houston is a great soccer community and that’s really based on the fact that we are an international city. While American football rules here in Texas and in the United States but we’ve got a great culture for international soccer here too.

There is a Major League Soccer club here called the Houston Dynamo that has a passionate fan base. The PNC Stadium has hosted more international soccer games than any other new soccer stadium that has been built in North America.

Promoters continuously bring their matches to Houston because they know that they will be successful here with crowds and entertainment from other aspects. The NRG stadium, where the World Cup will be played, is a regular host to the Concacaf Gold Cup tournament that comes through every two years and other major international friendlies. We’ve had Manchester United vs Manchester City, Real Madrid vs Bayern Munich and tonnes of other major international football clubs coming through here and selling out stadiums to play their matches. So, there is a greater culture and appetite for the game here.

Of course, anywhere in this country there is an opportunity to grow the game and to make it bigger and that’s part of the motivation of having a World Cup in this country. The question is in our market, how do we take the opportunity to grow the game and expand its impact.

How much of an impact will the 2026 World Cup have on the growing popularity of soccer in the US?

It is going to be incredible. The World Cup was here in 1994 and the growth of the game in that time has been amazing. In 1996, Major League Soccer was launched and the influence that it has had on sport in this country has allowed it to gain traction. Every four years when a World Cup takes place in other countries, you can see the interest, excitement, popularity and following that the competition gets.

To have it in this country with the focus on the game for 35-40 days plus, its actually hard to measure how grand the impact is going to be throughout this country in taking the sport to the next level.

Can Houston entertain tourists and fans?

Absolutely. As mentioned, Houston has been the host to many major sporting events. The city has performed brilliantly time and time again, hosting thousands of people to drive a massive economic impact and creating lasting legacies in the community.

Houston has one of the biggest collections of hotel rooms in this country, it has tremendous restaurants and cuisines, as well plenty of arts and entertainment, from the arts district, the museum district, and even the Houston Zoo. We also have NASA here and Space Centre Houston which is a huge attraction for people. Annually in Houston there is the livestock and rodeo show, which is an annual full month event in March that generates around three million in attendance every single year – it is basically like hosting a sold-out Super Bowl every day for 21 days straight, so we really have the network of everything in place and capabilities.

This is what we showcased to FIFA a few weeks ago when they were in town for a site visit, and in a chance of good fortune, the day they were doing the visit Houston was hosting the MLB World Series – the [Houston]

Astros vs the [Atlanta] Braves – and we were able to take FIFA to the World Series so they could see first-hand our city at work when putting on a major event.

How will the local economy benefit from hosting the World Cup, in terms of global visibility and tourism?

First and foremost, the visibility for the city is a major driving motivator here for our mayor and other leaders. Whilst Houston is a global city it is a city that continues to be on the rise and wants as much exposure as possible globally and when you factor in that the average viewership for every single World Cup match is 190 million worldwide with the fact that we are going to potentially host five or six matches, right there alone you can see the type of exposure the city will gain. With all the social and digital media, it is a huge opportunity for Houston to capture a global audience and build its brand internationally.

From an economic standpoint, in 2017 when the NFL Super Bowl was here, it had an economic impact here in the region of US$347 million, and you must keep in mind that was one game on a Sunday afternoon with about a weeks’ worth of events leading up to it.

Again, with the World Cup we are going to potentially have five or six games at our NRG stadium over the course of three plus weeks. It would be the equivalent of having six Super Bowls over the course of a month in our city, so perhaps the economic impact of hosting a World Cup here would be north of US$1 billion. It’s a really significant number we are talking about here.

What legacy would you like to leave behind for the city of Houston?

From day one the vision of our city’s leadership and our local leadership has been to bring the World Cup here to have a great impact in our community and help make it a better place. Therefore, we have been focused on creating that legacy and around those three pillars of growing the game, defending human rights and protecting the environment. We look at Houston as an innovative city.

As mentioned, we have NASA here, we are home to the largest medical centre in the world, and we are the energy capital of the world so with that we have a lot of innovative minds. Our legacy is built around using innovation to drive forward success in those three pillars that I mentioned.

With all that in mind, we created an institution that we launched about a month and a half ago, the Soccer Innovation Institute. It is going to be a non-profit organisation that overseas our legacy strategy and all those things I have spoken about. We will hire a chief legacy officer to make sure that legacy is consistently present throughout our bid. At the end of the day, we think our legacy is what we will be measured on, so it is a primary focus for us. We hope our legacy strategy is something that is a real point of differentiation from the other cities and helps put us at the top of the table. ◆

“From day one the vision of our city's leadership and our local leadership has been to bring the World Cup here to have a great impact in our community and help make it a better place."