This World Cup shows Europe’s golden age of sport is over
This World Cup shows Europe’s golden age of sport is over
Tim WigmoreThu, June 4, 2026 at 8:05 AM UTC
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The US holds its second World Cup in 32 years this summer - Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Getty Images
Hosting the World Cup is meant to be a once-in-a-lifetime event. But millions of Americans this summer will remember when the United States last staged a World Cup in 1994.
In 2028, the US will host the globe's other pre-eminent sporting event: the Olympic Games, which return to Los Angeles. Last summer, US football fans watched many stars of the World Cup play for their domestic teams in the Club World Cup. Cricket staged World Cup matches there for the first time in 2024. Rugby union will do the same in 2031, when the US will be sole hosts of the World Cup.
The surge of the biggest sporting events in the US is one illustration of how European sports fans, accustomed to staging a disproportionate share of world events, have to accept a new reality. A growing share of elite international sports contests will be staged away from the Continent.
Less clear is whether such competitions will move football, and sport more broadly, beyond its European centre of power. With money from outside the Continent reshaping sport, is the long golden age of European sport coming to an end?
Europe's desire to host events diminishing
When the modern Olympic Games were inaugurated in 1896, returning to their original home of Athens, they immediately established that the default home for any major international sporting event would be in Europe. From 1896-1928, eight of the first nine Olympic Games were on the Continent. So were four of the first six football World Cup competitions, from 1930-1958.
For decades, European countries hosted most major events. They hosted 10 of the first 18 football World Cups and 16 of the first 27 Summer Olympic Games. Europe also staged 10 of the first 12 World Athletics Championships, four of the first seven cricket World Cups, and five of the first 10 rugby World Cups.
But this concentration of events in Europe has ended. Now, "money is increasingly determining where things happen," Stefan Szymanski, the co-author of Soccernomics, says. "Europe has had more than its fair share of these events. It ought to be a good thing, in general, for Europe to be less dominant. It can't be healthy for sport to be dominated by one small segment of the global population."
The move away from Europe extends far beyond the US. The 2032 Games will be in Brisbane; Ahmedabad, Doha and Riyadh are vying to host the 2036 Games. Saudi Arabia is the sole host for the 2034 World Cup; it will be the second World Cup hosted in the Gulf in 12 years, following Qatar in 2022.
Of the five editions of the World Athletics Championships from 2019-2027, Europe hosts only one. As in 2025 (Tokyo), the 2027 edition is being held in Asia (Beijing).
The World Athletics Championships returns to Beijing in 2027 - Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters
Even Europe's hold over rugby is loosening. The next two World Cups will be held in Australia and then the US, with speculation rife that the 2035 competition will be taken to the Gulf. The 2033 Women's World Cup will also be staged in the US.
One sport's power has already moved away from Europe. "Cricket is an Indian game, accidentally discovered by the English," the sociologist Ashis Nandy famously observed. India has or will host four of the nine major men's events from 2023-2031; the country co-hosted last year's Women's World Cup. India also stages the Indian Premier League and Women's Premier League, the sport's most lucrative club competitions.
Europeans must accept hosting fewer leading international sports events, believes Ed Warner, the former chair of UK Athletics. He predicts that, in lieu of the Olympic Games and major World Cups, increasingly "Europe will end up falling back on second-tier competitions and individual championships".
Desire among many Europeans to host events has diminished: "The super big events are expensive and controversial with taxpayers." These costs are becoming even greater as tournaments expand. At the same time, authoritarian regimes, notably in the Gulf, are using sports events to generate soft power, while governing bodies are trying to cultivate the US market.
The upshot is that world events held in Europe will increasingly be limited to tournaments that countries do not require major new infrastructure to host. "When I hear the Mayor of London talk about wanting to have the Olympics back, I applaud the ambition," Warner says. "But when it really comes to it, will nations be lining up for the 2040 Olympics that have greater leverage financially?
"It's perfectly credible that London's in for the 2029 World Athletics Championships, because it's something that costs tens of millions of pounds, not billions. So maybe Europe's playground now is world and European championships for individual sports, not the Olympics."
European capitals would welcome the Olympics but not the multibillion pound bill hosting the Games require - Geoff Caddick/EPASupport from Europe and Anglosphere no longer path to power
On March 20 last year, in the Costa Navarino resort in Greece, Kirsty Coventry was elected as the president of the International Olympic Committee. When the Zimbabwean assumed office, she became the first IOC president from outside Europe or North America.
Lord Coe, Britain's candidate, was widely expected to be a front-runner in the election. He won eight out of 97 votes; Coventry won in the opening round.
The history of the IOC is one of European control. From the IOC's formation in 1894 until Coventry's election, eight of the nine presidents were European; the only exception was an American.
The shock in Europe at Coventry's election crystallised the Continent's waning control of global sport. To maintain influence, European bodies must become savvier at accepting these new realities.
"One hundred per cent," Warner says. "UK Sport will be all over an analysis of why Seb got so few votes. Lessons will be learnt."
Coventry's election showed that, to reach the top in the IOC, support from Europe and the Anglosphere is nowhere near enough. This has long been true in cricket.
In 2005, the International Cricket Council moved from Lord's to Dubai, symbolically marking the shift in the sport's centre of power. The position of ICC chairman was created in 2014. So far the post has been held by four people. Three are Indians, including Jay Shah, the incumbent, who is the son of the Indian minister of home affairs.
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Shah's penchant for publicity has long been notorious. One Board of Control for Cricket in India video covering this year's T20 World Cup final in Ahmedabad featured 12 shots of Shah in 37 seconds. Shah even lifted the trophy in Ahmedabad, looking less like a neutral arbiter of the game's global governing body than a member of the Indian management.
Ostensibly, football's power brokers largely remain European. Eight of the nine men to serve as Fifa president, including the incumbent Gianni Infantino, are from Europe. Yet regardless of the president's nationality, their power derives from a vote bank beyond Europe. In 2019 and 2023, Infantino was elected by acclamation.
Infantino's popularity is underpinned by his appeal in emerging football nations. Two of the biggest changes in recent years – the introduction of the 32-team Club World Cup, from last year and the expansion of the World Cup to 48 teams, from this year – have been driven by associations outside Europe.
Uefa, the governing body for European football, has resisted these ideas. Uefa was lukewarm about the World Cup expansion; Europe's largest clubs initially opposed the enlarged Club World Cup. Now, Uefa opposes suggestions that the 2030 World Cup could be enlarged again, to 64 teams, and that the Club World Cup could include 48 sides.
Such expansion largely aims to give more opportunities to sides beyond Europe. The Continent had 13 places in the 32-team World Cup, but only received three of the extra 16 berths in the 48-team format. Europe's declining share of places reflects the continent's declining power.
Gulf's money has reshaped sport
Golf provides the starkest example yet of how an influx of money can reshape a sport. Dozens of the world's leading golfers signed up to LIV Golf Investments, which is funded by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), after it launched in 2021. Jon Rahm earned $300m for switching to LIV and leaving the PGA Tour.
Initially, Saudi Arabia appeared to have bought an entire sport. Yet gargantuan spending did not produce a spectacle that attracted fans of the traditional tour. LIV and the PGA announced a merger in 2023 after two years of civil war, but now the PIF has confirmed it will stop funding the circuit at the end of this season.
Saudi money has transformed boxing and turned Riyadh into the new Las Vegas for the biggest fights - Richard Pelham/Getty Images
Saudi Arabia's PIF owns Newcastle United, and is – through its stake in DAZN, the competition's broadcaster – effectively bankrolling the entire Club World Cup. By the end of 2024, the PIF had already spent at least $51bn on sports investments, James Montague wrote in Engulfed: How Saudi Arabia bought Sport, and the World. This spending encompasses everything from boxing to chess, all-women wrestling to snooker and esports.
Money from outside Europe is buying influence within the Continent, and not just for Saudi Arabia. The Qatari Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the president of PSG, is the chair of the European Club Association, the group of Europe's largest clubs who shape many of Uefa's decisions. Manchester City are owned by Abu Dhabi United Group. Eleven Premier League clubs are now majority-owned by US investors.
Yet it is revealing that North America and Gulf investors still gravitate to European sport, rather than focus on their own domestic markets. "While a growing share of investment funds in global sport are from the Middle East and the US, that doesn't mean that it's Middle Eastern sport and United States sport that's principally responsible for that growth," explains Kevin Alavy, global managing director of the consultancy Futures Sport. "US sports owners sense that European football represents a growth opportunity."
For all the hype about the Saudi Pro League, and Cristiano Ronaldo's $200m (£160m) annual salary at Al-Nassr, there is scant indication of overseas viewers being enticed away from European leagues. A decade ago, Chinese league football was hailed as a threat to Europe, but interest from the state swiftly waned as costs piled up.
Carlos Tevez signed for the Chinese Super League club Shanghai Shenhua in 2017 for a reported salary of £30m a season, but the state soon lost interest in boosting the competition with unsustainable investment - STR/AFP
The same might prove true of the Saudi league, Szymanski believes. "It could also blow up in their faces. It's really hard to say whether that's going to happen. But the Saudi league is not really creating overseas interest in the quality of the football – that's the issue. It's not so simple to just uproot everything."
Now, conflict in the Gulf threatens to bring new complications to the region's sporting aspirations. The perceived conservatism of taking mega-events to Europe, rather than newer markets, might seem increasingly attractive.
Europe is still the best place to be in sport
Even if Europe must become accustomed to a diminished share of major sports events and power to run games, the Continent's on-field dominance remains durable. By some measures, indeed, European sport is becoming stronger on the pitch.
The five per cent of the world's population who live on the Continent between Portugal and Croatia account for 15 of the 20 countries to reach the World Cup semi-finals since 2006. Even the Morocco side who reached the 2022 World Cup semi-finals showed Europe's strength: 14 of the 26 players in their squad were born there.
More than half of Morocco's 2026 World Cup semi-finalists' squad were born in Europe - Noushad Thekkayil/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
The website Transfermarkt assesses the value of footballers around the world. In 2010, 71 of the top 100 most valuable footballers were from Europe. Today, that number has risen to 75. The entire world outside Europe and South America has only six of the 100 most valuable players. Western Europe is also becoming stronger in women's football; the region has produced six of the past eight World Cup semi-finalists.
European sides were not as dominant in the Club World Cup as feared; Manchester City were eliminated by a Saudi Arabian side Al-Hilal. Yet Europe still provided three of the four semi-finalists and both finalists. The overwhelming financial dominance of the Continent's clubs is such that Igor Jesus, who scored the winning goal as Brazil's Botafogo beat Paris St-Germain in the group stage, moved to Nottingham Forest.
In the Olympic Games, European countries continue to outperform nations with far bigger populations. Europe accounted for five of the top 10 countries on the medal table in the 2024 Games.
In football and beyond, the concentration of talent in Europe is self-perpetuating: playing against the best helps players and teams improve. European youth national teams play three times more than those in the rest of the world, Fifa has found.
"It's the network of people, the network of relations and people being adjacent to each other and sharing information," observes Szymanski. "Europe is the best place to be in the sporting world. And Europe capitalises on innovations even if they start somewhere else.
"Longer term, maybe if European wealth declines, then European sport will decline as well. But as long as Europe remains amongst the wealthiest places on the planet, I think its sporting dominance will remain."
Europe's control over how global sport is run, and where it is played, is loosening. Yet the Continent continues to produce much of the best sport, especially in the world's favourite game. The World Cup represents an attempt to make football less Eurocentric. The tournament might also emphasise how far ahead of the rest of the world Europe remains.
Source: “AOL Sports”
