Home Transaction Banking Bank of America Data Show Record Fan Spending at World Cup
Author: Anthony Noto | Photos: Shutterstock
As World Cup spending surges, BofA’s year-long merchant preparation is paying off.
Exorbitant ticket prices be damned. Die-hard soccer fans are flocking to host cities across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico for the first tri-nation tournament in FIFA history. And they are proving to be exceptionally big spenders .
The Bank of America Institute — the firm’s research arm — mined its credit and debit card data and learned that the 2026 FIFA World Cup is delivering a massive economic win for host cities, driven overwhelmingly by these hefty-spending, out-of-town visitors.
During the tournament’s opening days from June 10–21, overall consumer spending in host markets jumped 6.3% year over year. “Non-local” cardholders — a category tracking both international tourists and U.S. residents traveling out of state for matches — fueled the lift. Their spending, according to data shared with Global Finance , climbed 16.7% year over year.
Bank of America’s data also highlighted a lucrative trend for local merchants: visiting fans are out-purchasing non-fans by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.
“We’re really only halfway through, as you know, so no surprise that the majority of that spend has been driven from non-local residents coming in,” said Sara Walsh, a Bank of America managing director who oversees the bank’s relationships with vendors and networks in payments and has spent more than a year preparing merchants for the tournament. “Restaurants, bars, hotels, of course, make up the majority of that.”
The data tracks with results from last year’s FIFA Club World Cup , a smaller-scale tournament that Bank of America Institute found drove a 7% year-over-year rise in consumer spending in host zip codes. Walsh told Global Finance in a phone interview that the event effectively served as a dry run for the numbers the bank is now seeing at scale.
“The Club World Cup gave us a nice little pilot into what the stats would look like, and they were very consistent with what we’re seeing here,” Walsh said.
Soccer fans, meanwhile, are proving to be especially heavy spenders. A study Bank of America conducted with Visa found that soccer fans spend on average 2.8 times more than non-fans, according to the Institute. Walsh said the bank analyzed customers making purchases tied to FIFA and MLS tickets to reach that conclusion.
The scale of the opportunity is significant. The tournament’s 16 U.S., Mexican and Canadian host cities together represent:
Historically, host nations have seen an average 0.4 percentage-point lift in GDP growth in the year following the tournament, the Institute found.
Bank of America began preparing merchants for the World Cup surge more than a year ago. It drew on its position spanning treasury, card-issuing and merchant-services clients. The prep work centered on three areas: building tools for merchants to capture customer data and loyalty even after fans leave the U.S.; speeding up checkout through contactless and pay-at-table technology; and ensuring cards from international networks, such as Japan’s JCB , are accepted without triggering declines.
“Merchants can either survive the World Cup or prosper from the World Cup,” Walsh said, citing a colleague’s framing of the stakes.
Restaurants and ba…