Two glasses of beer in front of TV playing football
The 2026 World Cup — the world’s largest soccer tournament — kicks off on Thursday, June 11. From from that day through Sunday, July 19, the tournament will be hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, featuring 48 teams and 104 matches over 39 days. It’s an event that always attracts many customers to Mexican/Latin restaurants. And the fact that it’s happening in North America this summer means it brings a bigger, potentially more profitable opportunity for restaurants to capitalize on World Cup mania than ever before!
On April 30, el Restaurante and the Latino Restaurant Association hosted a webinar on how restaurants can take advantage of the World Cup (click here to watch a recording of the webinar, which was sponsored by the California Milk Advisory Board). The key presenters were Oscar Delgado and Samona Caldwell from the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission, who shared seven key take- aways from that event:
1. Ten cities in the United States are hosting the games — Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay area — and each host city has a website set up to help local businesses maximize the opportunity. The web- site is the same URL format for each city: losangelesfwc2026. com, dallasfwc2026.com, miamifwc2026.com, and so on (note that New York/New Jersey is nynjfwc2026.com). These websites have guidelines about how businesses can get involved, including information about how restaurants can register to be considered for catering, food truck and other foodservice opportunities related to the games.
2. Some of the host city websites mentioned above, including Los Angeles, offer restaurants the opportunity to register their World Cup viewing events with the local committee, which will then disseminate the information to the public. For example, if you are located in Los Angeles and plan to hold viewing parties for specific games, register your restaurant and parties at https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/user/ register to be placed on the Los Angeles “39-Day Fan Experience Guide.”
3. If you hold a viewing event in your restaurant or bar, you are welcome to promote it with generic soccer-related verbiage such as “See the Big Soccer Game Here,” or “Watch the Brazil vs. Mexico Game Here on Tuesday.” But you cannot use any language or logos that imply an official affiliation with FIFA. For example, you cannot even say “Watch the FIFA World Cup games here.”
4. If your expected audience is fewer than 1,000 people, you don’t need a special license to show World Cup games. However, you should still register your event with FIFA through their portal, https://football.service-now.com/ public_viewing. You can use your normal commercial TV sports package to show the games (they are going to be on Fox and Telemundo). If your event will be larger than 1,000 people, you will have to pay an as-yet-undetermined fee to hold the event. Register through the portal mentioned above and you will learn what the fee is.
6. Consider focusing on a specific country or region. For example, if many of your customers are from Mexico, consider showing all the games being played by the Mexican national team, then promote your viewing events to local soccer clubs, team fan clubs, or other organizations that serve a Mexican population.
7. Keep in mind that you might need to adjust your hours or staffing to accommodate certain games due to the time differences across North America. FIFA rules do not allow you to record a game and show it later — all games must be shown live.
The World Cup is a great opportunity to draw more customers to your restaurant — don’t let this once-every-four-years event pass your restaurant by!