The Fifa men’s football World Cup is one of the most powerful brands in sport, attracting global attention with a simple formula of rarity, intensity and consequence.
Every four years, this high-stakes tournament feels distinct from everything else in the football calendar. So changing the format is a gamble.
But the 2026 World Cup, held in the US, Canada and Mexico, will be the biggest yet, featuring lots more teams – 48, up from 32 in 2022 (and just 24 back in 1994). And this means a lot more matches – a jump from 64 at Qatar 2022 to 104 in this year’s event.
This level of expansion reflects a broader shift across elite football. Several big tournaments (the Champions League, the Euros, the Club World Cup) are all played with more teams than they used to be.
And there are clear benefits. A larger World Cup for example, allows more nations to participate, extending the tournament’s reach and audience. For smaller football nations, it increases the likelihood of qualification and the opportunity to appear on the sport’s biggest stage for the first time.
More matches and more countries participating also means the potential for even greater revenue generation in new markets.
But aside from making Fifa more money, or football more inclusive, expansion could also damage the World Cup’s strength as an event.
This strength has traditionally come from the rarity and jeopardy of the occasion.
Qualification has always mattered because it was a difficult thing to achieve. Reaching the tournament at all was a show of footballing prowess, and once a team was there, the structure of the competition ensured that early matches carried real consequence.
In terms of successful branding, this intensity concentrates fans’ collective competitive and emotional investment in the event.
But dramatically expanding that event risks damaging this setup. More teams means that qualification becomes less selective, while staging more matches reduces the importance of individual games (and demands a level of viewing time that could test even the most committed football fan).
In marketing terms, this weakens what’s known as “perceived consequence”, the extent to which individual matches are seen to meaningfully shape outcomes and command fans’ attention. As the tournament grows (and there are some who want 66 teams to qualify for 2030), it can lose intensity.
There is more football, but less at stake with every kick.
Different goals
Expansion is often justified on economic and political grounds. The cost pressures on host counties has pushed governing bodies towards larger and more widely dispersed formats (hence this tournament being held across three countries).
But recent research I carried out with a colleague suggests that staging a tournament across multiple countries can be a complicated business too. Different places operate in different ways, with different resources and goals, so alignment can prove tricky.
That said, co-hosted events can work, but only when spectators manage to perceive the tournament as one coherent event, rather than a fragmented set of parts. As scale and complexity increase, sustaining that perception becomes more difficult.
With more teams, more matches and football stadiums in three large countries, the 2026 World Cup brings these challenges into sharper focus. It also has to deal with a broader shift which has seen elite football become an almost constant, never-ending series
of tournaments and fixtures throughout the year.
Competitions seem to exist as part of an ongoing, always-available media flow rather than isolated events.
In this context, the World Cup risks becoming just another part of high-value extended media property designed to maximise engagement across time rather than concentrate it. But dilution can lead to the weakening of a brand as its defining elements become less clear or less exclusive.
The qualities that once made the World Cup brand so distinctive risk becoming less sharply defined.
As more teams qualify, entry may feel less exclusive, and as more matches are played, individual fixtures become less decisive. As tournaments grow longer and more complex, the sense of a single, shared global moment becomes more diffused.
The World Cup will almost certainly remain football’s most valuable commodity for the foreseeable future. But its long-term health depends on maintaining the qualities that make it feel exceptional rather than routine.
If expansion continues to prioritise availability over intensity, the risk is not that the World Cup will fail – but that it will gradually lose its value as a global event that transcends the sport itself.
