64-team World Cup could reshape football’s balance of power

The first 48-team FIFA World Cup has barely concluded, but Gianni Infantino is already considering the possibility of making football’s biggest tournament even bigger, a move that could reshape the sport’s financial landscape.

Speaking to Swiss television during the tournament, the FIFA president said a 64-team World Cup was one of the ideas that could be explored after the finals, reigniting debate over just how far the competition can expand.

The logistical challenges of another expansion are clear. A larger tournament would require more stadiums, greater hotel capacity, expanded transportation networks and, in all likelihood, a longer competition.

The financial consequences, however, could be even more far-reaching.

With more places available, qualification would become easier for many of football’s biggest nations, potentially diminishing the commercial appeal of qualifying competitions while further elevating the value of FIFA’s flagship event.

If broadcasters place less value on qualifying campaigns, the sport’s six continental confederations could become increasingly reliant on FIFA’s financial distributions.

That shift would strengthen FIFA’s influence over the global game, concentrating even greater financial and political power in the hands of football’s governing body.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for the World Cup itself, and it’s not a good idea for our qualifiers either. So I’m not supporting that idea,” UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin said last year. The European governing body’s position has not changed since then.

Asian Football Confederation President Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa has also voiced opposition, questioning last year where further expansion might end.

FIFA did not respond to requests for comment.

“I think it is important that when you want to organize a World Cup, you do it for the whole world, not just Europe and South America,” Infantino said when discussing the idea of an expanded tournament. “If you don’t give smaller countries a chance to participate in the World Cup, they’ll lack the incentive to keep improving.”

Challenges on an entirely different scale

The 2026 tournament in Canada, Mexico and the United States was the first since 1998 to move away from the 32-team format, expanding to 48 nations and 104 matches over more than five weeks.

If the competition retained the same basic structure, with four-team groups followed by a 32-team knockout stage, a 64-team World Cup would feature 128 matches, 24 more than in 2026 and double the total staged under the previous 32-team format.

Unless FIFA compressed the schedule or staged more games simultaneously, that could add roughly another week to a tournament already lasting more than five weeks.

Plans are in place for Spain, Portugal and Morocco to stage most of the 2030 finals, with Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay each hosting a single opening-round match to mark the tournament’s centennial.

Accommodating 64 teams across six host nations would present a formidable organizational challenge. Doing so in a single country could prove even more demanding.

Saudi Arabia, due to host the tournament alone in 2034, already faces significant scheduling questions. Ramadan is expected to begin in mid-November that year, making the November-December window used for the 2022 World Cup in neighboring Qatar difficult to replicate and potentially forcing another unprecedented reshaping of the global football calendar.

A 64-team tournament would magnify those challenges, requiring more stadiums, training facilities, hotels, transportation capacity and volunteers while placing additional pressure on infrastructure in a country still developing its tourism industry.

The Saudis have proposed 15 venues for the existing 48-team format, with eight stadiums in Riyadh, four in Jeddah and others in Khobar, Neom and Abha. Construction and renovation work is already underway ahead of the 2027 Asian Cup.

Domestic pressure

An expanded World Cup would also place greater strain on an already congested international calendar and increase pressure on domestic leagues, many of which have aligned themselves with Europe’s traditional August-to-May season.

Japan’s J-League is about to begin its first August-to-May campaign, while Major League Soccer plans a similar switch beginning next year.

Any future winter World Cup would therefore disrupt a growing number of competitions rather than primarily Europe’s major leagues, as was the case in 2022.

World Cups can be costly for national federations, even wealthy ones such as France. The French Football Federation expected to spend 24.5 million euros ($28 million) at this year’s World Cup, with federation President Philippe Diallo saying Les Bleus would probably need to at least reach the semifinals to avoid losing money.

At the April FIFA Congress in Vancouver, Diallo said FIFA needed to provide greater financial support to participating nations.

If a 48-team tournament is already stretching the finances of participating federations, a longer 64-team event could increase those costs further.

Player welfare concerns would also intensify, with more matches adding to the workload of elite players.

A 64-team tournament would give more nations access to football’s biggest stage but could also reignite debate over competitive balance, tournament length, fan costs and whether the World Cup risks losing some of the exclusivity that has long underpinned its appeal.

Whether the idea progresses beyond discussion may depend in part on how the first 48-team World Cup is ultimately judged.

DAILYSABAH