Fans Flock to World Cup Host Cities—Accounting for 80 Percent of Tournament Attrition

Major sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup and international music tours are major events that create cultural and economic significance. But these developments also come with large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions from international travel, building infrastructure, and mass consumption.

Last week, a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge published a new paper in the journal Communications Sustainability to examine major events from a “climate performance” perspective. Analyzing the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which ended on Sunday, and Coldplay’s 2024 European tour, scientists weighed the consumer welfare benefits of each event against the costs of emissions.

“Effective climate strategies for major events such as the World Cup go far beyond reducing emissions from stadiums, as this is only part of history,” explained Cambridge professor Shaun Larcom in an announcement about the report’s findings.

According to the research group’s estimates, the expansion of the 2026 World Cup to a 48-team format is expected to increase carbon emissions by about 590,000 metric tons compared to the 32-team tournament of previous years, which will reach about 4.23 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Of that amount, 82 percent was caused by fan travel, with international travel accounting for 3.07 million metric tons. The estimated emissions from the 2026 World Cup were in line with Iceland’s total annual emissions, the researchers found.

If the climate costs of these carbon emissions were passed directly to spectators, they would cost an additional $114 per game ticket on average. Using the same framework for Coldplay’s 2024 European tour (10 cities, 32 shows, 1.9 million tickets), climate costs without mitigation measures would reach $11 per ticket. Although the scale and distances traveled by fans are different from the World Cup—and the research team says they did not intend to directly compare the two—the trip shows who the “key players” are in reducing pollution.

Coldplay has made efforts to cut emissions associated with consumption at the show, including using mobile battery systems and solar power generation and a kinetic dancefloor. But researchers estimate that nearly 98 percent of the reduction in carbon emissions from Coldplay’s tours is due to fans voluntarily revising their travel habits. The band has provided a dedicated app that allows fans to compare low-carbon travel options, as well as merchandise discounts for eco-conscious fans, helping to drive this behavioral change.

As a result, Coldplay’s tour succeeded in reducing pollution from fan travel by 48 percent. Combined with other measures, this has reduced travel content emissions by 46 percent compared to regular travel—reduced by nearly half.

The researchers proposed a two-tier economic framework for decision-making aimed at dealing with climate damage caused by extreme events. The first stage involves comparing the economic benefits to the organizer and the price to the spectators—estimated based on the demand for tickets—with the financial cost of carbon emissions. If the costs outweigh the benefits, the study suggests that organizers should consider postponing, redesigning, or canceling the event.

When applied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup and Coldplay’s 2024 European tour, the framework showed that in both cases, the economic benefits outweighed the climate costs. However, the researchers note that with the World Cup, the calculations may no longer hold if the social cost of carbon—that is, the cost per ton of emissions based on the damage they will cause—is on the high side.

“Large entertainment events may generate more than enough welfare to cover their costs,” said Jackson Goldman, one of the authors of the study, in a statement. “What is needed now is for the organizers and fans to work together to deal with these conditions that pollute the air.”

The second step is to include the cost of climate change damage in the total cost of the event. While the research team argues that organizers should be responsible for direct emissions related to venues and staging, they argue that the costs of indirect emissions—such as fan travel and return—should be shared by both organizers and fans.