The best teams have ended up in the biggest stadiums in massive cities with lots of disposable income. Amazing how well that random World Cup draw worked out for FIFA.

^Coincidence?  

Let’s go back to before the countries that qualified for the World Cup were known. You could still buy tickets at this point, as I did, and the only things you knew at that point, as it related to group stage games, were the dates and cities the games would be played in.

Once everyone had qualified, aside from the last spots being settled in confederation or inter-confederation playdowns, the draw was held that let you see the actual fixtures along with the groups and where all the round robin games would be played.

Clearly random.

Yet…

How did it end up, if you look at the current ELO rankings, which are far more based on the current landscape than FIFA’s own ranking system, that the top 12 ranked teams in the tournament play considerably more games in the US, as a percentage of all group stage games played there, than in all Mexican and Canadian stadiums combined?

Yes, that means that a team ranked in the top 12 in this World Cup plays in almost 29% of the round robin games played in the US but only 12.5% of the games scheduled for Canada and Mexico.

It gets even worse if you just look at games played in the five largest stadiums in the US. Those would be in Dallas, NY/NJ, Kansas City, Atlanta and Houston in descending order. The 24 group stage games being played in these cities see 39.6% of the participating teams being ranked in the first quartile (ie. top 12) of the competition. That’s more than triple what Canadian and Mexican cities get.

What incredible good fortune for FIFA that their highest ranked teams, which clearly would have the most drawing power, were disproportionately scheduled to play in the largest stadiums in the competition. Factor in the wisdom of the move to dynamic pricing and that four of those five cities are among the most populous of the 16 host cities ( they rank 2nd, 4th, 5th and 7th). Even better is they all have higher median incomes in their metro population than any of the host cities in Canada or Mexico. Best teams + largest stadium capacities + large host population + high median income = Best Day Ever For FIFA!

Incredible luck that in a random draw 40% of the games involving the top quartile of the competing teams happen to play in five of the six largest stadiums in the competition (Azteca in Mexico City being the lone interloper in that category) and that those stadiums happen to be in large cities with above average amounts of disposable income! Couldn’t possibly be any other reason that this is the way the chips have fallen.

Only other point worth making here is the quirk of fate that has seen the current US administration’s least favourite state, California, not get a single top 12 team appearing in any of the ten games split between Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Washington state, also not a fave of the DC rulers, is the only other city that does not get to see a team from the top quartile.

Here’s the best I can do to show my work in reaching these conclusions. For a Google Sheets version of this, click here.