With about a year until the opening of Etihad Park, NYCFC CEO Brad Sims is hard at work selling suites, premium seating and sponsorships for the team’s new soccer-specific stadium in Queens. In many of those conversations, he asks one question that tends to grease the skids: “What are your plans for the World Cup?”
The MLS club has purchased more than $1 million worth of tickets for 2026 FIFA World Cup matches at MetLife Stadium, including ultra-premium hospitality tickets through On Location (the World Cup’s official hospitality provider) and high-end general seating purchased from the New York New Jersey 2026 World Cup Host Committee, to offer prospective Etihad Park suite, premium-seat and sponsorship clients.
“If you’re able to make a commitment — we have an executed contract and a deposit and money down — we’ll host you at a game or games of your choice,” Sims said of his pitch to potential clients.
Sims said the club has used about half of its stash of 300-plus World Cup tickets and has already generated contractually obligated income equal to 17 times its investment, a figure he ultimately expects to reach 30-to-1. The biggest success story so far came when the team secured a 15-year Etihad Park suite commitment worth nearly $5 million from a buyer looking to land four tickets to the World Cup Final on July 19.
“That was someone who wasn’t even on the radar of being a buyer,” Sims said. “He went from being not on the radar to being interested in the entry-level suite to then upgrading the suite and extending our max term length to get access to the final.”
NYCFC is a prime example of how MLS clubs are trying to turn the World Cup into a business development opportunity. Across the league, teams are using access to World Cup tickets as currency with existing and prospective clients, staging watch parties to reach new fans and building data-capture operations designed to convert tournament interest into long-term customers.
Through a joint venture between MLS and On Location, each of the league’s 30 clubs is an authorized sales agent for premium seating at World Cup matches. That access has positioned teams to provide partners and season-ticket holders with a trusted path to high-quality World Cup tickets amid uncertainty about ticket availability in the months leading up to the tournament. Teams’ sales efforts have also created a meaningful revenue opportunity at the league level (financial terms of which remain undisclosed), even as the direct club-level commissions have been relatively modest.
“It was more about getting them the access to get in early versus the commission part,” said Jake Reid, president and CEO of Sporting Kansas City. “I’m not downplaying that we’ve probably made a good amount, but that was not really the key driver. The ability to be the key stakeholder to get them in the door early was really the big benefit.”
Watch parties put on by MLS clubs are also poised to drive incremental sponsorship revenue and fuel unprecedented data capture, as more than two-thirds of teams have announced plans to stage public viewings during the World Cup.
Reid said Sporting Kansas City, which is staging watch parties and concerts at its stadium under the banner Soccer Capital Summer, has both brought on new sponsors specifically for the events and generated additional spend from existing partners. Jared Shawlee, president of the San Jose Earthquakes, similarly characterized the sponsorship revenue opportunity associated with the club’s tournament-long watch party at San Pedro Square Market as significant.
In terms of data capture, teams are expecting to add up to four times as many fan records to their databases this season compared to last year, largely through RSVPs and free tickets to World Cup watch parties. The Houston Dynamo, who are hosting watch parties and other ticketed events at Shell Energy Stadium, are among the clubs with the loftiest projections based on the proximity of their venue to the city’s FIFA Fan Festival.
“We think it’s probably about four times as many new people in our system as there normally are, which is a huge number,” said Jessica O’Neill, president of business operations for the Houston Dynamo and the NWSL’s Houston Dash.
Shawlee said the Earthquakes received more than 10,000 RSVPs for their screening of the opening match featuring Mexico against South Africa, and aim to host 500,000 fans over the course of the 39-day tournament. The team intends to use the influx of fan records to drive ticket sales for two large-venue matches — against the LA Galaxy at Stanford Stadium and against LAFC at Levi’s Stadium — after MLS’s World Cup break.
To convert those new fan records into in-person experiences, many MLS teams are adopting a First Match On Us initiative that offers fans the opportunity to attend their first match for free. The league has encouraged teams to adopt the concept this season following a particularly well-received rollout by the Seattle Sounders in 2025. The Dynamo, NYCFC, Sporting KC, Galaxy, San Diego FC, St. Louis City SC and Nashville SC are among the clubs leaning into the program.
“Not only are they coming back, but they’re buying season tickets,” O’Neill said. “Not all of them, obviously, but enough of them to tell us this is worth continuing. There’s value in every new person that comes into the stadium, but also enough of them are coming back or will come back based on what we know.”
Alex Silverman can be reached at asilverman@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
