Days after the end of the 2026 FIFA World Cup for men’s soccer teams, Houston officials said their hosting seven matches was a major success. Now, they’re moving forward with bidding to host the Women’s World Cup.
“We will make a formal bid to FIFA, along with a couple of others, and present why we think Houston should be selected as a host city for the Women’s World Cup in 2031,” Ryan Walsh, CEO of the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, toldHouston Public Mediaon Wednesday.
The 2027 Women’s World Cup will be hosted in Brazil from June 24-July 25, 2027. FIFA is expected to announce the host countries for the 2031 tournament in the coming months, but thus far only one bid has been submitted: a joint submission from the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica.
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There likely would be some notable exceptions, however. Most notably, the women’s tournament would likely be scaled to different venues.
“It’s a different size, but we want to continue that excitement,” Walsh said. “We certainly want to make sure that they understand that the collaboration is still there.”
Houston is also expected to make bids for other international sporting events in the coming months and years, Walsh said, including the Rugby World Cup also in 2031; the World Masters Athletics Championship, a track and field tournament for athletes 35 and older; and several opportunities for the NCAA tournaments, including Final Four and Sweet 16 games.
See here for some background; based on that previous post, to the best of my knowledge the US is locked in as one of the host countries for 2031. It’s a matter of which cities will do the honors, and not surprisingly there are many other possible suitors. We have the experience from this year and our well-regarded Reliant Stadium as well as Shell Energy Stadium as the venues, so I feel pretty good about our chances. And also, the Rugby World Cup sounds awesome. I’ll be rooting for that one as well.
Great,
More taxpayer payoff to the corrupt Trump supporters at FIFA.
More lies from Whitmire and the GHP about economic return.
Zero public accounting about money spent.
Zero benefit outside of Whitmire’s insider group.
Bill, are you asserting that the City and/or the associated venues and/or venue owners are losing money when hosting a sports tournament in Houston ?
I assert that the taxpayers lose money when they use tax revenues to subsidize sports.
The MAGA Venue owner probably make a killing.
BB: Defining persons solely in terms of their status as taxpayers (intentionally) flattens the experience of personhood and the benefits of membership in a society.
And it is invariably a technique of those same MAGA ownership types you purport to object to.
re: “I assert that the taxpayers lose money when they use tax revenues to subsidize sports.” Taxpayers lose money (out of their collective pockets) when they (presumably local government) use tax revenues to pay for any City expenditure or, indirectly, lose money (out of their collective pockets) when they (presumably local government) grant multi-year tax abatements to developers/builders/industry. Question is, does the benefit outweigh the loss ?
Are some Trump supporters crooked AF ? Probably.
Is FIFA crooked AF ? Sure.
Are some of Whitmire’s inside supporters crooked AF ? In all likelihood.
Is there zero public accounting about (city) money spent ? Not with Chris Hollins bird dogging it, apparently.