What the NFL can (and will) learn from the World Cup's global takeover
Every time a college football team torches the opposition for an entire season — think 2019 LSU, 2021 Georgia or 2025 Indiana — sports talk hot-takers start wondering if this team could beat an NFL squad. (It's always the Cleveland Browns in this hypothetical scenario.) The truth, of course, is that the worst NFL team — yes, even the Browns — would obliterate even the finest college team. They're just totally different weight classes, totally different universes.
The NFL got a look at this dynamic from the other side this summer. As popular as the NFL is — and make no mistake, the NFL is still America's most popular form of entertainment in any medium — it's a minnow in the ocean compared to the World Cup. Millions more viewers, billions more in revenue. The World Cup is a reminder to the NFL that there's a whole planet of sports lovers out there who don't much care whether this is the Cowboys' year.
The NFL will never compete with the World Cup, but the NFL can learn from the World Cup. Here are a few lessons that The Shield will likely incorporate from the inspiring, thrilling and so, so lucrative tournament that comes around every four years.
Ticket prices
The most notorious element of the 2026 World Cup, and one likely to linger, was FIFA's realization that fans were willing to pay astronomical sums to get in the doors of the 16 arenas holding World Cup matches. FIFA priced the tickets at staggering levels, sent prospective buyers through a labyrinthine lottery process, didn't even disclose the exact seats available for purchase … and fans still flocked to pay up. The lesson there for the NFL is, sadly, obvious — if people want to get in the door badly enough, they'll jump through all the hoops you put in their way. Expect dynamic pricing and other techniques designed to separate fans from their money to spread across the NFL over the coming years. Sorry, but you know it's coming.
Fan fests
The World Cup played out on hundreds of thousands of public televisions across the world, with fans gathering around bars and backyards in communal joy. But the fan fests taking place in each host city were the epicenter of the outside-the-stadium activities. Giant screens showing every game, sponsor activations, giveaways and a general sense of happy camaraderie made these gatherings the place to be if you couldn't get in the stadium. Some NFL teams already put on versions of these, but usually only for ticket holders on the way to the stadium. World Cup-style street parties, like the league already does for its NFL Draft, could further expand the Shield's brand and goodwill.
National/regional identity
The World Cup offers fans of participating nations the chance to lean into their own national identity, bringing the best of their home country to the fore. The NFL tries to keep everything within its purview unified, a standardized brand with different helmet colors. Why not allow individual teams some more room to express local identity? Pittsburgh is different from Tampa is different from Arizona is different from Seattle … why not build more branding efforts around cities and regions, rather than around logos and bloodless "Keep fighting"-style mottos? The story of the World Cup was made up of a hundred different, smaller stories; why not let the NFL's story breathe and expand a bit beyond bland sponsor-friendly narratives?
Scarcity works
The World Cup comes along only once every four years, and plays a limited number of games over about a month. The NFL, obviously, cycles around annually and lasts for five-plus months — not as long as, say, baseball, but not rare either. Add in the hypefests for the NFL Draft, schedule release and other offseason activities, plus the ever-increasing in-season expansion — Hello, 18-game schedule! — and the NFL is giving away the very scarcity that makes it so precious.
Opaque bureaucracy
Like ticket prices, this won't come as good news for fans. FIFA does what it wishes because it knows fans will come back to the matches no matter what kinds of questionable, infuriating or outright corrupt decisions come down from on high. The NFL will throw its weight around, but the Shield hasn't tried anything as brazen as FIFA's revocation of a red card against the USMNT's Folarin Balogun. But now that FIFA's shown that the "just try and stop us" approach works, well … there's now precedent, is all we're saying.
A sense of humor
All too often, the NFL and its most ardent devotees treat the league as something more solemn than national security. It's football! It's sports! It's supposed to be entertainment, not a grim march of tactics. The World Cup got weird at times, from the roving bands of Europeans discovering the glories of America to Erling Haaland's stuffed raccoon. The NFL could use a bit more low-stakes, high-humor strangeness.
It followed me home 🦝🤣 pic.twitter.com/IwMhgv0CAb
— Erling Haaland (@Erling) July 13, 2026
VAR and referee transparency
Look, VAR is coming to the NFL. The technology already exists to track every element of the ball's movement, and the only reason the league continues with some of its human-focused measurements is to preserve tradition. But now that we've seen how VAR can slice a game literally down to a hair's length, expect that technological innovation to come to fall Sundays soon. When a wide receiver lines up offsides by a toe, wiping out a long touchdown, the VAR wall of death will be there to show us the offending digit in full color.
International outreach
The NFL's plans for beyond America's borders continue to scale upward, and with good reason — there are a whole lot of untapped markets and as-yet-unreached sports fans out there who love being part of a global event. Expect to see the NFL follow in FIFA's footsteps, making ever more inroads toward making American football a truly international sport, not just a curiosity for the rest of the world.
Build to a crescendo
Some coaches will frame the season as four quarters. (This was easier to do with 16 games than 17, but ride with us here.) Win three games in each quarter, and you're headed to the playoffs. So why not take the next step and give each month of the season its own identity? September football is very different from December football, and not just because of the weather. FIFA has specialized in turning the entire World Cup saga into one long narrative; the NFL should follow this kind of storytelling logic within each season. A game catches fans' attention for three hours. A story holds it for months, years, or a lifetime. The World Cup has mastered that; the NFL needs to understand why.
We'll crown four Super Bowl champions before the next World Cup comes around. That's a whole lot of time for the NFL to establish itself as more than just a "national" entity. FIFA has provided the blueprint; now it's the NFL's turn to execute the plays.
