FIFA WORLD CUP A FLOP FOR LOCAL HOUSTON BUSINESSES

Written by Michael Thervil

FIFA WORLD CUP A FLOP FOR LOCAL HOUSTON BUSINESSES

[FIFA World Cup Houston businesses] Historically, when the FIFA World Cup comes to a country, local businesses tend to do exceptionally well. However, in the case of FIFA coming to the City of Houston, it's been reported by many local businesses that FIFA and its World Cup seem to have flopped from a small to medium sized business perspective. With local businesses reporting lackluster sales, many business owners are beginning to wonder if the notion of the World Cup coming to Houston has been oversold. While it's true hundreds of thousands of people have flocked to Houston to either watch the World Cup matches or to simply engage in activities that are related to the world cup, hotels within the immediate vicinity of the World Cup matches in Houston have collectively reported only an 11% increase in occupancy rates.

Could it be that city officials were somehow duped into allowing the FIFA World Cup to occur in Houston? Or could it be that Houston city officials were blinded by the potential revenue streams that FIFA has brought into other countries that may have hosted the World Cup? Either way, business owners within Houston are not happy with the financial outcome of Houston hosting the FIFA World Cup. But what if the reason why local small and medium sized businesses struggled during Houston hosting the World Cup was due to the fact that city leaders failed to come to grips that not only isn’t Houston a soccer city, but America is not a soccer country.

Given the fact that it was reported that an estimated 550,000 people attended World Cup events across the City of Houston, and of that, only 260,000 actually attended the fan festival in east downtown, and only 68,000 attended an actual FIFA match. That's a fraction of the amount of people when compared to the fact that an estimated 3,404,252 spectators across 64 matches were attended by people in 2022 when Qatar hosted the FIFA world cup. Some may point out that Qatar hosted 64 matches and Houston only hosted 6 and that the high number of matches brought in the high number of spectators in which local Qatari business benefited from and that may be true. However, there are several variables that shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to understanding why slumping sales plague local businesses in Houston

Variables such as exceptionally high-ticket prices while people are struggling to make ends meet coupled with dynamic pricing, inflation, and rising oil and gas prices which adversely affect transportation prices. Then there were the draconian laws that surrounded the use of the name “FIFA” and “World Cup” which resulted in businesses being banned from using the name and words to promote soccer related events. Then there was the resentment that came about from Houstonians when they found out that the NRG stadium would have to change its name to suit the demands of FIFA combined with the fact that they feel as if FIFA engaged in sheisty business practices with the City of Houston and the City of Houston went along with it, essentially “selling out the soul” of Houston for the “promise” of make money on the back end if they hosted the World Cup.