The most interesting news out of Chicago about this year’s World Cup finals is that there isn’t any. We Old Ones remember that Chicago hosted the official opening match of USA ‘94 (watched on TV by an estimated 750 million people) plus a further five games at a sold-out Soldier Field. But even with those credentials as a venue, our self-described “world city” is not among the 16 host cities for the 2026 finals hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
Blame Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Or better yet, give him credit. Illinois elected leaders have a sordid tradition of caving to the extortionate demands of its hometown sports oligarchs. For example, the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, that fount of fiscal folly, enabled the state of Illinois to wholly or substantially fund new stadiums for the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Bears in the 1980s and early 2000s, respectively.
Having seen what easy marks politicians are, the owners of the Cubs in 2010 lobbied state lawmakers to have ISFA issue up to $300 million in bonds backed by the city and county taxes to help them turn Wrigley Field and environs into the kind of place you could take your mother if Mom likes weak lager. They asked in spite of the fact that the Ricketts family are worth around $8 or $9 billion and the Cubs franchise is as close to a money machine as exists.
It was all wearisomely familiar. It used to be that the people knocking on the door of the Statehouse and courthouses in Illinois were the poor who had been left behind, or thrown aside, by the capitalists. Since the 1970s, it’s been the capitalists who seek succor in their time of greed. People love their sporting spectacles, so while stadium subsidies have always been dubious economics, they used to be good politics. But Emanuel, who was then mayor, basically said, “We got taken by the Sox and the Bears and we won’t get taken by the Cubs,” so the Cubs got peanuts.
Which brings us back to Chicago and the 2026 World Cup. What its fans sometimes call “the beautiful game” is organized – and exploited – by some of the world’s least beautiful people. In return for the chance to see soccer played live by athletes they don’t know representing countries they never heard of while being serenaded by Scots fans playing bagpipes at 6 a.m. on their home from a bacchanal, host cities had to submit to vassalage to FIFA, the game’s international governing body that organizes the tournament. Each city will have to shoulder the very considerable infrastructure and security costs of the games while FIFA keeps the vast majority of the revenue from ticket sales – average ticket prices range from $300 to $1,400 – hospitality and sponsor deals, all of which are exempt from local taxes. FIFA also is free to modify contract terms at any time, including changes to stadiums.
Basically, FIFA has found ways to loot cities without resorting to war. They should get a peace prize.
Chicago’s mayor, however, was the wrong guy to play for a sucker. Emanuel had a city to run and no money to indulge the mini-Trumps that populate FIFA. He formally withdrew from the host city bidding process in 2018, saying, in effect, “You gotta be kidding me.” The climate had changed. The mood had soured. The goalposts had moved. The cliches had been updated. Illinois voters, the most generous of people, no longer need open their wallets to needy billionaires.
The McCaskey family seems not to have noticed, maybe because the news was not about their kind of football. Collectively, these owners of the Chicago Bears are worth about $8 billion, but they are that saddest of creature, the envious billionaire. They decided that the new/old Soldier Field that the taxpayers had mostly bought for them (and which will cost another half billion bucks by the time the bonds are paid off in 2032) is not good enough. They want a domed stadium. They also want naming-rights revenue and parking revenue like the other owners plus hotels, restaurants, offices and shops and apartments and condos and maybe even a convention center. If they can’t build it in Illinois, they’ll take their team to Hammond, Indiana, a Superfund site with a post office.
Nothing was quite settled when the legislature adjourned but legislative leaders and the governor did a Rahm and made clear that wherever the McCaskeys build Bearsville they won’t do it with Illinois money. Think about it. Since 2010 the Ricketts, FIFA and the McCaskeys have made Illinois officials offers they ought to refuse, and they all did. That’s like being at the ballpark and seeing an unassisted triple play. You know it can happen, but you never expect to actually see it.
Mr. Krohe began watching the World Cup in the 1970s and hopes to see the day when FIFA is given a red card and sent home.
This article appears in June 25-July 1, 2026.
