So to sum up what you wrote we are paying the same amount in taxes for the World Cup to be held in Santa Clara that we could have paid if the World Cup was held here. The argument here is not whether the USA should be hosting the tournament.
No shit, it’s whether you want the tax money you’re already paying to go to things that benefit taxpayers, or a circus with no proven economic benefit. I thought that was pretty well established.
This is NOT World Cup related but ya'll might want to keep an eye on the weather. Getting serious all over. Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana....
The question was not whether Chicago should write FIFA a blank check. Of course it should not. The question was whether Chicago could structure a deal where FIFA, federal security funds, private sponsors, hotel/event taxes, and stadium-user fees covered the event costs while Chicago used its publicly owned lakefront stadium for global exposure. That is a solvable deal-structure problem, not a reason to surrender the opportunity.
God this match was a slog. First really boring one so far this tournament. Pete (can't expect them all to be good)
Yet it doesn’t appear other cities have been too successful at solving it! And again, why should such a deal need to be structured when there’s no proven economic benefit. There are an infinite number of initiatives the city could invest in with proven benefits, but instead people will let the fact that they like soccer inspire an argument that we should invest in one that consistently shows slim to no benefit, and then invest other resources to chase down costs from other buckets of taxpayer money (federal and state taxpayer money can also be spent on things that benefit taxpayers instead) or the private sector. Again, FIFA wasn't negotiating when we told them to go scratch, the president of USSF is on record as having said so himself, and they straight up told Los Angeles (of all places!) that the only benefit they’d get is name recognition, the profits go to FIFA, and if FIFA doesn’t profit, somebody’s gotta pay.
I know things can change, but after watching that last match I think Croatia can take both of these teams handily. Pete (thinks maybe even the Fire could beat them)
Croatia essentially has to beat both. Yes, they should, but moving would have been easier if Panama and Ghana drew.
The argument/idea that there is no economic benefit is absurd. Aside from that I’m not saying Chicago should have written FIFA a blank check. I’m saying a world-class city should be trying to host world-class events when the risk can be managed. Even if the city did not make a direct profit, the exposure has value. For a month, Chicago could have been shown globally as a lakefront, architectural, immigrant, sports city with one of the best urban backdrops in the world. That matters. Not everything worth doing for a city shows up as immediate cash profit. Some of it is about reputation, relevance, tourism perception, and reminding the world that Chicago belongs in the same conversation as the great global cities.
Colombia tried their best to give my Colombian friend Carlos a heart attack! Pete (is glad for his sake that they pulled out the win)
The idea that it has no economic benefit is actually pretty well grounded in data, it’s only your feelings about the game itself and the spectacle that appear to make you ignore the facts from what I can tell. We've already discussed long term investments and indirect profit, not sure why the circular reference here. But even if you want to say that we can just treat the cost as an advertising expense, so that even if (when) we lose money on it, we can pretend that in the long term it will inspire some family in Ghana to save their money up for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Chicago because they saw our lakefront for 2 seconds on a cutaway before another FIFA mandated commercial (or water lol) break, and we’ll get a few dollars of revenue out of that - you know we could just advertise, right? There is a much better ROI in just buying a bunch of ads than in throwing a bunch of cash and city resources at hosting a few games and hoping we make it back instead of just investing directly in the people. If we want to attract people from all over the globe (which we already do! Better than any city in the region!), spending the money on ads would cost less, wouldn’t require all of the ancillary costs like security and makeshift traffic lanes, and would have a longer lasting impact. By 1986 “fewer than 10 percent of the North American residents surveyed and fewer than 30 percent of the Europeans could recall […] the site of the 1976 Winter Olympic Games” and that’s an event with only one host city- there are more countries hosting this World Cup than that- fat chance people will remember KC or Seattle when all is said and done here. That is small sample for sure, but it’s just one of absolutely tons of data points out there proving the same point - unless we are really desperate for tourists or have a huge infrastructure gap that hosting the event will fill, hosting doesn’t justify the expense. The available numbers tell people way smarter than me that it’s not even debatable, and I usually try to listen to those people absent any evidence to the contrary.
I doubt many people can name a single host venue in Qatar and I doubt many people remember the hosts in Russia, either. Really, both of you make good points and I do not think it is as binary as it appears. I appreciate both perspectives. It would have been amazing to go to Soldier Field again for the World Cup. I still treasure the memories of 1994 and 1999 Women's World Cup, (my ears still ring from "Mia, Mia, Mia" being shouted in a piercing pitch and volume), but, and, with everything surrounding this World Cup, I just do not think it that big of a deal that it is not in Chicago. That said, I think this conversation has run its course. The decision for Chicago to not pursue being a host city was made almost a decade ago and it is a bit late to relitigate it now.
It is still relevant simply because it connects to similar issues like this: Mayor Johnson proposes $425M TIF subsidy for The 78 https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2026/06/17/mayor-brandon-johnson-425m-tif-subsidy-the-78
You’ll never guess how I feel about this but… take that shit to the Politics thread! Agree, and for clarity, I do not intend to relitigate it by posting contemporaneous accounts of how much cities are losing, I just find those relevant context for the current incarnation. As mod, if you see fit to remove any future such posts, I’ll mumble about it under my breath a little bit but that’ll be the extent of my discontent, probably.
Really pulling for our defender to get a win here, but South Africa's attack is not inspiring confidence. Pete (guesses it won't matter in the long run)
I can't believe what I just saw. RSA has a setpiece and the play is to pass to Mbokazi to take a shot, and when he does, the ball fails and comes off his foot anemically. He popped the ball! Tori Penso has to stop play and drop a new ball! Pete (thinks that's rotten luck)
Here's his teammate showing the flattened ball to the referee. Pete (saw TLB arguing he should get the free kick again, but to no avail)