SBJ Unpacks: World Cup has Dallas-Fort Worth wanting more

Tonight in Unpacks: With Spain’s semifinal win over France on Tuesday, Dallas Stadium has wrapped up its World Cup run. But North Texas officials imagine that the region could become a hotbed for big-time soccer events, reports SBJ’s Irving Mejia-Hilario.

Also tonight:

• Bundesliga, Versant sign new media deal
• A Klutch move for USMNT star Folarin Balogun
• Hydration breaks likely to be a key topic in future World Cup rights talks

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses the data points driving MLB’s 2026 season at the All-Star break, the tension between Argentina and England for Wednesday’s World Cup semifinal, Fanatics Fest’s growth and more.

ARLINGTON, Texas — Dallas-Fort Worth’s long-anticipated 2026 World Cup story came to an end Tuesday afternoon when Spain earned a spot in the World Cup final with a 2–0 win over France at Dallas Stadium.

La Roja’s F Mikel Oyarzabal, RB Pedro Porro and a passionate contingent of fans from Spain helped end France’s dream to win a third World Cup (and on Bastille Day, no less). Still, that didn’t stop Spanish fans from partying like it was 2010 throughout and outside the stadium as French fans headed for the exits, with some in tears.

While Spanish fans celebrated, North Texas officials are already beginning to imagine what will come next for the region. Tuesday’s crowd of 70,176 pushed Dallas’ World Cup attendance to 631,843 across nine matches and helped reinforce a belief inside Arlington, Dallas and the organizing committee that North Texas is just getting started in its fight for soccer’s future in the region.

Across those nine games, Dallas hosted more matches than any other World Cup venue, filling AT&T Stadium with roughly 70,204 fans each match (approximately 99.3% of its total soccer capacity) and turning group-stage and knockout dates alike into event days for Arlington’s entertainment district and beyond. Had the U.S. advanced out of its quarterfinal, it would have played its semifinal there; instead, local organizers got Kylian Mbappé, Lamine Yamal and one of the tournament’s marquee matchups.

In the eyes of local officials, staging more matches than any other venue, moving hundreds of thousands of fans through public transportation, running a 34‑day fan festival at Fair Park and hosting the International Broadcast Center show North Texas is ready to bid for the 2031 Women’s World Cup and make DFW a permanent stop on soccer’s global map.

Organizers are still separating forecasts from reality when it comes to numbers. They say they still are months away from a full accounting of hotel, sales, rental car and alcohol tax collections across the region, along with wrapping in costs and revenue tied to venue move-outs that stretches into late August.

Still, Arlington Mayor Jim Ross said early returns are looking strong, with June hotel revenue topping $31 million, up from about $23.5 million in November 2024, when the city hosted three Cowboys home games and the Mike Tyson–Jake Paul fight. He said preliminary estimates put Arlington’s World Cup economic impact around $160 million, roughly half of the city’s typical annual impact from AT&T Stadium.

The next phase

Monica Paul, president of the organizing committee, said the World Cup was another chance to show off North Texas’ competitive advantage. The next phase runs through the North Texas Sports Foundation, which is intended to turn the region’s World Cup infrastructure and experience into mini-pitches, programs and entrepreneurship opportunities that outlast 2026.

Paul also pointed to local Gainbridge Super League women’s team Dallas Trinity FC as a key piece of “intentionally growing the game on the women’s side” if the region wants to be credible in a 2031 Women’s World Cup bid.

On the club side, FC Dallas President and co-owner Dan Hunt said the tournament has already produced a halo effect.

“We’re already starting to see from a ticket sales and sponsorship standpoint at FC Dallas. It’s just really added awareness, having three guys in the tournament too, especially with [FC Dallas striker Petar] Musa scoring, and that’s an awareness thing for the club,” Hunt said. “If you have a strong national team program, it trickles down. I think this will be the next step forward. It will catapult MLS, USL and the NWSL. I hope that this creates thousands of more jobs and provides opportunities.”

Stadium situation

Fred Ortiz, global director of sports and entertainment for HKS Architects, said the World Cup has largely validated how AT&T Stadium was originally conceived, with no major operational misses surfacing as the tournament went on.

He said the venue is performing much as it did on the drawing board, “flexing and morphing” from Cowboys games to a FIFA setup without major friction.

Even with 17 years of hindsight, he said there is little he would change about the venue beyond continuing to layer in new technology and amenities as fan expectations evolve.

For the Cowboys, Chad Estis, EVP/business operations for the team and EVP/chief revenue officer for Legends, said international fans arrived much earlier and stayed longer than typical NFL crowds, which helped push general concession sales higher than a typical Cowboys game. He said the stadium’s $350 million refresh covered every suite, the entire center-hung board and roughly 3,000 televisions. The cost was separate from that of the temporary World Cup grass pitch.

Despite the World Cup’s different crowd, natural-grass setup and occasional need for curtains, he said the experience has not prompted the Cowboys to rethink how they operate AT&T Stadium for NFL games, saying he has confidence in their model that “already operates incredibly well” for its core business.

Estis said the Jones family accepted covered signage, displaced suite holders and even gave up Jerry Jones’ midfield suite to serve as FIFA’s VVIP box because “at the end of the day, we’re a part of this community, and we need to do our part for the community.”

The next challenge is taking FC Dallas’ World Cup bump, Dallas Trinity FC’s growth, a further validated AT&T Stadium playbook and the North Texas Sports Foundation and turning them into a serious 2031 Women’s World Cup case and a reliable pipeline of major soccer events returning to the region.

The Bundesliga is linking up with Versant starting with the 2026-27 season after signing a five-year deal for English-language rights in the U.S. and ending a six-year run with ESPN. Sources told SBJ the deal is worth a total of $100M ($20M AAV).

The Bundesliga had been earning around $30M per season in the ESPN deal, which covered English and Spanish and started at the height of the streaming wars. A source told SBJ that ESPN and Paramount+ also were interested in bidding for the rights.

A new Spanish-language rights deal will be announced later this week.

The new pact will see USA Network air over 30 matches, which is a sharp uptick in the number of games that previously appeared on linear TV each season.

In one of the deal’s more intriguing aspects, English-language games will stream for free on Fandango, marking the sports debut of the service that came with Versant in the split with NBCU (275 matches a season).

Relevent Sports repped the Bundesliga on the deal after agreeing to a 17-year partnership with the league in 2024.

“The key headline for us is that we are expanding our accessibility in the U.S. while simultaneously delivering strong financial results,” Robin Austermann, EVP for Bundesliga Americas, told SBJ. “We are quite happy that we also delivered a strong commercial result in a challenging market.”

A source close to negotiations said that adding sports to Fandango was something Versant had been thinking about since the NBCU split, and soccer presented a great opportunity given the young demos that the sport delivers. The source added that the goal is establish sports viewing habits at Fandango and fill out the platform with other sports in the future.

Since going off on its own, Versant has been acquiring rights of its own, including Pac-12 football, the WNBA and LOVB. The company also recently bought golf simulator business Full Swing. It also sold the assets of SportsEngine to Playmetrics.

USA Network already airs Premier League games. There may be opportunities for doubleheaders with the Bundesliga on the cable TV network.

Austermann noted the Bundesliga will have to educate and shift fans to USA Network and Fandango, but he also gave credit to Versant CEO Mark Lazarus and USA Sports President Matt Hong in convincing the league that this move could work.

“We see a clear commitment from them to really invest into it, to build the story, to tell the Bundesliga story, because this is pretty new,” Austermann said. “They wouldn’t acquire an international sports league and put it on the channel if there wouldn’t be that overall ambition to grow.”

Another appealing element of the Fandango deal is access to its existing database of ticket buyers and streamers. While the Fandango ticketing app was founded in 2000, the streaming service (largely on-demand movies) was previously called Vudu before a 2024 sale to Fandango prompted a rebrand.

ESPN will continue to have European soccer in the form of La Liga games, with the company in the middle of a deal worth a reported $1.4B over eight years, which runs through the 2028-29 season. The company also has rights to the Dutch Eredivisie.

For the handful of Bundesliga games that would air on linear ABC during the ESPN pact, those matches typically drew fewer than 500,000 viewers.

Klutch Sports has signed its first-ever soccer client in USMNT and Ligue 1 club Monaco F Folarin Balogun, who has signed with the agency for off-the-field representation.

Balogun’s work with Klutch will run through multiple arms of the company, including Klutch Marketing, with a group handling his portfolio instead of one lead agent. The agreement follows the firm’s push into global soccer that began with its acquisition of Berlin-based agency ROOF two years ago.

The 25-year-old striker scored three goals during the tournament and helped push the USMNT into the round of 16, elevating his profile with both fans and brands. However, Balogun also found himself in the headlines when President Trump contacted FIFA President Gianni Infantino seeking a review of Balogun’s red card during the game against Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was ultimately cleared to play in the Round of 16 match against Belgium.

Klutch, whose client list features stars such as LeBron James and Rams DE Myles Garrett, is expected to lean on its experience in endorsements and entertainment projects as Balogun’s visibility grows.

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Media and soccer executives see the hydration breaks at this summer’s World Cup are “likely to become a key topic in media rights negotiations going forward,” according to Ben Strauss of ESPN.com. This World Cup has “more effectively monetized a global sport that doesn’t have the same amount of natural ad breaks as football, basketball or baseball.” The breaks “raise questions about the sport’s future: how aggressively American domestic leagues incorporate the breaks; how European leagues address a flattening of broadcast rights money; and how much influence the U.S. has on the global game.” This new dynamic “comes at a vulnerable moment” for several global soccer leagues and their media rights. France’s top domestic league, Ligue 1, has “suffered through a series of failed broadcast partnerships” that have left the league to launch its own direct-to-consumer platform, Ligue 1+. Across Europe, “broadcast revenue is mostly flat.” Additionally, everyone “is chasing the Premier League.” The leagues have responded by “looking for new ways to generate broadcast revenue.” Execs agreed that, given its history and financial might, the Premier League “would almost certainly be the last place to adopt a change.” In the U.S., both the top domestic leagues -- MLS and the NWSL -- will “be negotiating new media deals in the next several years” (ESPN.com, 7/13).

READY FOR CLOSEUP: THE ATHLETIC’s Adam Crafton wrote the World Cup TV broadcasts cutting to FIFA President Gianni Infantino is “one of the unavoidable experiences” for viewers. The production house of the World Cup is called Host Broadcast Service (HBS). It is 49% owned by FIFA but majority owned by parent company Infront, which belongs to the Chinese firm Wanda. HBS provides the television footage, which is then “played out by all rightsholders globally,” including Fox Sports and Telemundo in the U.S. The television companies that acquire rights from FIFA are “obliged to use the footage provided by HBS, meaning it is not a choice by Fox or the BBC to show Infantino in every game.” FIFA says that it “would be misleading to say that it has directed specific shots of its president during games in this World Cup.” However, there is an agreement between FIFA and HBS to “say that there must be a ‘dignitary shot’ in every half of a game in order to showcase the highest-ranking officials present at a game,” as well as those “described by FIFA in its accreditation system as ‘VVIPs’ (Very, Very Important People)” (THE ATHLETIC, 7/13).

• Charlotte FC expects to forego approximately $8.25 million in season-ticket revenue over the next three MLS seasons by providing credits tied to around 15,000 seats following the club’s decision to end the sale of personal seat licenses, reports SBJ’s Alex Silverman.
• Calls from UEFA federations are increasing over finding a candidate to run against FIFA President Gianni Infantino at its next presidential election (talkSPORT).
• FIFA plans to expand its operations in the western hemisphere, and as part of that effort, it’s going to keep using the Miami office it opened as an American HQ for the World Cup (Politico).
• The 2026 World Cup semifinals are not just Argentina, Spain, France and England — it’s Adidas and Nike, as two of the teams are wearing Adidas and the others are sporting Nike (USA Today).
• Oslo saw more than 100,000 fans pack the streets of the Norwegian capital to welcome home the country’s soccer team from the World Cup (Reuters).
• The U.S. is likely to be one of four host nations for the 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and several markets — including some not involved in the ongoing men’s World Cup, such as Charlotte and Minneapolis — are already expressing interest in hosting matches in that tournament (Triangle Business Journal).

• SBJ’s Adam Stern interviews CEO Steve O’Donnell on NASCAR’s plans for global growth, which include projects spearheaded by the recent hire of Adam Layton as SVP/international.
• The average nine-inning MLB game played through July 8 lasted nearly 2 hours and 42 minutes, slightly more than four minutes longer than the average for the 2024 season, notes SBJ’s David Broughton.
• Cleveland-based KeyBank emerged as the founding sponsor of the city’s impending WNBA franchise, with a long-coveted multiyear deal two years ahead of the team’s first game, writes SBJ’s Tom Friend.
• With LA28 two years from opening, SBJ’s Rachel Axon checks in on the business side of the operation. It’s already sold almost 4 million tickets.
• The International Ice Hockey Federation signed a four-year U.S. media-rights deal making FloSports the exclusive home of the IIHF Men’s World Championship beginning in 2027, notes SBJ’s Alex Silverman.
• SBJ’s Josh Carpenter talks with Jim Furyk about his growing comfort in an analyst role for Golf Channel/USA Sports.
• The Yankees tapped Lumen Technologies for a large-scale fiber installation that will connect the organization’s data infrastructure inside Yankee Stadium to a new data center facility in Tampa, notes SBJ’s Rob Schaefer.
• Tennis players have the career grand slam. Tuesday’s op-ed provides a guide for those who want to achieve the “fan” grand slam.