More than a year ago, one of the giants of political reporting decided to embrace the fast-approaching World Cup.
Politico published a story in May 2025 on concerns from European soccer officials about President Trump’s border visa laws and how they might impact the tournament, and it led to a revelation for the publication. The outlet decided it would reframe its “Forecast” newsletter as a World Cup-focused feed when matches began last month, and Politico reporters have live-blogged throughout the tourney.
“The political and policy stakes around the World Cup obviously were going to be significant in the areas, geographical areas with the institutions that we cover,” said Sasha Issenberg, Politico’s managing editor of enterprise. “But there was a sort of failure in the sports journalism world -- you had sports reporters that generally were not alert to the political and policy dynamics. They either didn’t take an interest or they didn’t approach them the way that we would. And you had these major sporting institutions like FIFA, for example, that could be covered as political institutions, but political reporters didn’t take seriously.
“Our theory was one that some of the characters we write most about -- Donald Trump, [Canada Prime Minister] Mark Carney, [N.Y. Mayor] Zohran Mamdani [who] hadn’t won his primary at that point -- but you start to see major people who we focus on were going to be central to this over the course of the tournament.”
Politico’s dedicated World Cup coverage paid off over the July 4 holiday weekend, as it was right in the middle of one of the year’s most politically charged sports stories.
President Trump’s administration -- which had largely stayed behind the scenes during the opening weeks of the tournament -- played a crucial role in FIFA suspending the red card that was administered to the USMNT’s Folarin Balogun last week. On Monday, Politico posted an in-depth story by White House reporter Sophia Cai on the administration’s push to allow Balogun to play in the Round of 16 match against Belgium. In just over 24 hours, that story became Politico’s second-most-read World Cup item with 258,000 page views.
“If we had come up with a fanfic version of what the most political storyline of the World Cup would be, we wouldn’t have even come close to this one,” Issenberg said.
Politico’s most-read World Cup story remains a Cai byline on Iran’s concerns about the U.S. as a host country (274,000 page views). As of Monday afternoon, five of the top 10 stories for the day on Politico’s website were about the World Cup, and as of Tuesday, the live blog had generated 2.5 million page views.
Politico’s World Cup coverage over the past year mostly comprised enterprise or long-form stories, but Issenberg and others realized that quicker, fast-paced reporting would be needed. Over the four-day weekend, Politico had 37 World Cup bylines from datelines including Canberra (Australia), Calgary, Miami, Washington, Brussels, London and N.Y.
“We recognized that once you get to June, this is going to be the biggest story arguably in global media, that the political and policy storylines won’t be this thing off to the side,” Issenberg said.
“One of the things we’re trying to do broadly at Politico is we have a real mandate to become a global news organization and figure out how we don’t just cover Washington for Washington and Brussels for Brussels, but can speak to a global audience that’s in politics and policy.”
