Bank of America shows record F

As World Cup expenses mount, BofA’s year-long business preparation is paying off.

Damn the exorbitant ticket prices. Hardcore football fans are flocking to host cities in the US, Canada and Mexico for the first Tri-Nations tournament in FIFA history. And they are proving to be exceptionally big spenders.

The Bank of America Institute – the firm’s research arm – mined its credit and debit card data and discovered that the 2026 FIFA World Cup is delivering a huge economic win for host cities, driven by these heavy-spending, out-of-town visitors.

During the opening days of the tournament from June 10–21, total consumer spending in host markets increased 6.3% year over year. “Non-local” cardholders – a category tracking both international tourists and US residents traveling out of state for matches – added to the excitement. According to the data shared, their expenditure global financeUp 16.7% year over year.

Bank of America data also highlighted a fascinating trend for local merchants: visiting fans are outselling non-fans by a margin of nearly 3 to 1.

Pre-tournament warmup

“As you know, we’re really only at the halfway point, so it’s no surprise that the majority of that spending has come from non-local residents visiting,” said Sarah Walsh, a managing director at Bank of America, who oversees the bank’s relationships with vendors and networks in payments and has spent more than a year preparing merchants for the tournament. “Restaurants, bars, hotels, of course, make up the majority of it.”

The data track with the results of last year’s FIFA Club World Cup, a smaller-scale tournament in which the Bank of America Institute found that consumer spending in the host zip code increased 7% year-over-year. Walsh said global finance The event effectively served as a rehearsal for the numbers the bank is now seeing on a larger scale, he said in a phone interview.

“The Club World Cup gave us a nice little pilot of what the stats would look like, and they were pretty consistent with what we’re seeing here,” Walsh said.

Meanwhile, football fans are proving to be particularly big spenders. A study conducted by Bank of America in conjunction with Visa found that football fans spend an average of 2.8 times more than non-fans. Walsh said Visa and the bank analyzed customers who made purchases related to FIFA and MLS tickets to reach that conclusion.

The scale of the opportunity matters. The tournament’s 16 American, Mexican and Canadian host cities together represent:

• $11 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP)
• approximately 130 million people, and
• 33 million international visitors are expected annually.

The institute found that historically, host countries have seen an average of 0.4 percentage point increase in GDP growth in the year following the tournament.

a year of preparation

Bank of America began preparing traders for the World Cup surge more than a year ago. It leveraged its position to reach treasury, card-issuing and merchant-services customers. Preparatory work is focused on three areas: creating tools for merchants to capture customer data and loyalty even after fans leave the US; Expediting checkout through contactless and pay-at-table technology; And ensuring that cards from international networks like Japan’s JCB are accepted without degradation.

“Traders can either survive the World Cup or get rich from the World Cup,” Walsh said, citing a colleague’s decision to fix the stakes.

Restaurants and bars need the most help, Walsh said, especially around pay-at-table functionality that is common internationally but was slow to catch on in the US. The bank also trained retailers on how to use 3D Secure Authentication – a phone-based verification step common in Europe – given the risk of transaction friction in crowded, high-traffic settings with spotty connectivity.

“We didn’t want to have customers who were standing in line, they came all this way, got ready to shop and their cards were declined,” Walsh said. Cross-border approval rates have remained stagnant so far due to fans traveling from city to city, he said.

spread to other events

A surprise for the bank is its spending in unrelated events and areas. Walsh said Bank of America has seen international visitors attending Major League Baseball games and concerts during their trips, as well as an increase in sales of merchandise associated with national teams.

“You’ll have people who are buying things from some of these teams that maybe no one had heard of in these countries a month ago, and all of a sudden they’re winning,” Walsh said, adding that merchandise sales represent a “fun kickback” opportunity for merchandise associated with the Cinderella-story squads.

For example, Cape Verde’s inspiring World Cup performance enthralled fans. The team, representing the island nation with a population of only 535,000, went undefeated in the knockout stage and suffered a hard-fought 3–2 defeat to defending champions Argentina in extra time.

Bank of America worked with Visa and FIFA, along with industry forums including Money20/20, the Electronic Transactions Association and the Merchant Advisory Group, to prepare merchants of all sizes through its Merchant Engagement Program, Walsh said.

Looking to the future, Walsh said the bank plans to apply lessons learned from the World Cup to future events on U.S. soil. These include the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup, which the US will co-host with Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica.

“We will certainly continue to use these events as learning opportunities, make improvements where we need to, and be prepared for those events as well,” he said.

Anthony Noto covers corporate finance and private debt. Contact him at anoto@gfmag.com