Will World Cup soccer matches be played in Atlanta in 2026? And how about college basketball’s Final Four a few years after that?
The Atlanta Sports Council continues to work on “active bids” for both events with hopes of securing them for Mercedes-Benz Stadium in the coming months, ASC President Dan Corso said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week.
He expects FIFA to announce North American host cities for the 2026 men’s World Cup in “early to mid May” and for the NCAA to select hosts for the 2027 through 2031 men’s Final Fours by “late fall.” Atlanta is “targeting” the Final Four in either 2029 or 2031, he said, because those years are the best fits for available hotel and convention space.
Atlanta’s World Cup bid has been in the works since July 2017, almost a year before FIFA – soccer’s global governing body – announced in June 2018 that the 2026 event will be held in 10 or 11 U.S. cities, three cities in Mexico and two or three in Canada. Atlanta is among 17 cities still bidding for the U.S. slots in a process that has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“FIFA is dealing with a lot of cities, so it does take time, but I think there is momentum to get the host cities named,” Corso said. “We are looking forward to it. We feel we are in really good position. Over the course of the bid, we’ve had great dialogue with FIFA and U.S. Soccer.”
Other than a visit to Atlanta last September by a 23-member delegation representing FIFA, which is based in Zurich, the discussions have been via Zoom video conferencing.
“We have been engaged seemingly more since the beginning of this year,” Corso said.
The Atlanta bid group’s “desire” is to host five or six World Cup matches, including a semifinal, he said. But he doesn’t expect the planned May announcement of the sites to specify which cities would host which games. “They’re going to name the cities and then work on the schedule in 2023, so that’s when your level in the tournament is determined,” he said.
In their pitch to FIFA, Atlanta bid organizers have stressed the closeness of downtown hotels and convention facilities to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the city’s history of hosting big events, the success of Atlanta United and the world’s accessibility to Atlanta because of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
The cost of hosting a World Cup is expected to be comparable to hosting a Super Bowl, Corso said. Atlanta’s bid for the 2019 Super Bowl put a $46 million price tag on hosting that event – about $20 million of which came from businesses, $16 million from a portion of the Atlanta hotel-motel tax designated for major events and $10 million from a sales-tax exemption on tickets. Such revenue streams are part of the game plan for hosting the World Cup.
“Our model is a combination of public and private (funding),” Corso said. FIFA isn’t requiring a detailed funding plan until the year after the host cities are selected, he said.
FIFA is requiring that Mercedes-Benz Stadium, or any other stadium with artificial turf, commit to temporarily installing natural grass if chosen for the World Cup.
“That has been part of the discussion we’ve had recently,” Corso said. “It’s been very technical-based: the type of blades of grass, the ventilation, the irrigation systems, things of that nature. They’re working now on coming back to us as to the timeline of when they would want (grass) installed at the stadium. … We are comfortable (it can be done).”
Meanwhile, Atlanta’s Final Four bid is an attempt to retrieve an event the city lost to the coronavirus in 2020. Mercedes-Benz Stadium had been scheduled to host that year’s Final Four, which was canceled in the early days of the pandemic.
Because the event is contractually committed to other cities through 2026, the 2027-31 bid cycle is Atlanta’s first opportunity to get back in a long line to host the Final Four. The Sports Council has focused on 2029 and 2031 because of conflicts with the other three years open for bidding.
“We’ve got some discussions ongoing with (the NCAA) and more planned in the summer,” Corso said. “We’ll look at a potential site visit for them to come to Atlanta in late summer. Then there will be a presentation to the men’s basketball committee in the fall.”
He believes losing the 2020 Final Four after years of planning could work in Atlanta’s favor this time.
“(NCAA officials) were very pleased with the preparation we had done as an organization and a city for 2020,” Corso said, “and I think they were even more pleased with how we reacted to the news of the tournament being canceled – the manner in which we worked with them. It has certainly been communicated to them that we want it back, and we have heard from them that they very much would like to come back, so it’s a matter of making the fit happen again.”
Dan Gavitt, the NCAA senior vice president of basketball, said last year that Atlanta “will be given every consideration for the next Final Four selection process” in light of the 2020 “disappointment.”
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