Weekly Briefing - World Cup Clarity

Dec. 13, 2025 | v33i14 | Subscribe

This issue of the Global Atlanta Weekly Briefing is sponsored by Smith + Howard:

Finding World Cup Clarity

For the last year, we’ve consistently been asked one thing:

What’s your World Cup strategy?

A logical question for a publication examining the import of global trends on the city, especially one that got its start in the run-up to the Olympics.

But like seemingly everyone else, we’ve answered so far with a blank stare. I know a lot of smart people are focused on using the tournament to underscore Atlanta’s (very solid) argument as the epicenter of the North American soccer universe and maximizing the benefit of the tourism influx and global spotlight.

These are noble efforts, but our sense is that the question is coming to us with such frequency because, in some way, the community is looking for direction. Everybody knows this will be huge; few know just what to do with it.

I wasn’t around for the Olympic prep of the early 1990s, but my sense is that the public then was more galvanized. Maybe that means Atlanta is now grown up, flush with global-city assets and the swagger to match. Perhaps we’ve just grown complacent. Or, some might argue, we were waiting for strategic clarity all along: How do you prepare your house if you don’t know who’s coming over?

The good news is that a switch seems to have flipped last week, first with the excitement of the overall team draw, marked with a big party at Buckhead Village chock full of VIPs. The next day, FIFA revealed the slate of at least seven nations whose teams will face off here.

We did get two matches with world No. 1 Spain, though some football purists were unimpressed with the broader lineup. Others foresee a brewing attendance crisis if rigidly high prices meet lackluster games. Some lament that we missed out on countries with supposedly better tourism potential and investment followup, like Brazil/Scotland, or South Korea.

Optimizing is all well and good, and communities should definitely be unrelentingly strategic, but we shouldn’t miss the point: What a luxury it is to be arguing about how to leverage a landmark global event for transformative impact. It’s the city version of a first-world problem.

Thankfully, judging by the flurry of World Cup events and panels around town this week alone, the conversation and sentiment have moved from “What’s going on?” to Let’s do this. Put us in that latter camp.