More than 5.4 million fans attended FIFA 2025 World Cup games this summer at U.S. stadiums in Dallas, Kansas City, Houston and several other major cities. For retailers, restaurants and commercial property owners, though, simply being in one of the tournament’s 11 U.S. host markets didn’t guarantee a boost in business during these soccer games.
Location mattered. But so did what retailers and property owners did with in these locations.
That’s one of the key takeaways from a new report from Colliers and Placer.ai that highlights retail and dining patterns during this summer’s World Cup. The report, 7 World Cup Lessons for Retail, Dining & Real Estate, found that the tournament’s economic impact was highly localized, with the strongest gains concentrated around stadiums, Fan Fests and commercial districts that became part of the fan experience.
According to the report from Colliers and Placer.ai, dining visits near match venues increased 53.7% on a year-over-year basis during the World Cup tournament, while retail visits climbed 22%. By comparison, host markets overall, when you don’t just focus on locations close to venues, saw only a modest visitation advantage over markets that didn’t host World Cup matches.
“Mega-events create enormous consumer demand, but proximity alone does not guarantee that businesses will capture it,” said Anjee Solanki, national director of retail services and practice groups for the United States at Colliers, in a written statement. “The properties that performed best became part of the fan experience through the right tenant mix, gathering spaces or activations.”
What does this mean? The World Cup provided the traffic. The properties that benefited most were those that gave visitors a reason to stick around after the matches ended.
In little surprise, bars and pubs located near U.S. World Cup venues saw some of the biggest gains in business. Across host markets, they averaged a 9% increase in match-day visits. Sporting goods retailers performed even better, recording higher match-day visits in all 11 U.S. host metros, averaging about 14% above pre-tournament same-weekday levels. That consistency made the category the tournament’s biggest retail winner, according to the Colliers/Placer.ai report.
Other retail categories produced more mixed results. Apparel stores and superstores, for instance, didn’t experience the same across-the-board gains. That suggests that major sporting events don’t necessarily lift every retailer equally. Businesses that have a natural connection to the event, or that can create an experience around it, saw more consistent boosts in activity.
Public fan activations also played a role. Fan Fests and other community events helped spread the World Cup experience beyond stadiums, giving more consumers a reason to gather in commercial areas. But the resulting boost to nearby businesses varied depending on where those activations were located and how they were designed.
That could offer a lesson for municipalities and developers planning for future mega-events. The Colliers/Placer.ai report suggests that organizers can’t just create an event in a market and expect surrounding properties to benefit automatically. The connection between the event and the commercial district has to be intentional.
“Retail and dining locations close to the action during the World Cup events benefited from the increased enthusiasm and many were able to capitalize on the attention in host cities,” said Elizabeth LaFontaine, director of research at Placer.ai, in a written statement. “Traffic growth for retail categories like sporting goods was strongly correlated to the World Cup, cementing that the summer of sports captured the American shopper.”
For landlords and investors, that creates another way to think about event-driven real estate. A property near a stadium or entertainment venue has an obvious locational advantage. But its tenant mix, public spaces and ability to host activations will help determine whether that advantage translates into any real increases in consumer spending.
That lesson could become increasingly important as cities compete to attract major sporting events, concerts and other large-scale gatherings. The properties best positioned to benefit may not necessarily be those closest to the action. They may be the ones that can become part of it.
The Colliers and Placer.ai analysis also comes with an important caveat: Its visitation data measures domestic U.S. traffic and excludes international visitors. As a result, the numbers don’t capture the full impact of foreign tourists who traveled to the United States for the World Cup.
