The World Cup has arrived, but how are the vibes?

 

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The World Cup has arrived, but how are the vibes?   June 8, 2026 By COMMONWEALTH BEACON STAFF

The wait is over: The 2026 World Cup will kick off later this week with matches set to be held across 16 cities in the US, Canada, and Mexico.

Massachusetts officials have been busy for months planning for the seven matches at Gillette Stadium, renamed Boston Stadium for the tournament, and the influx of international soccer fans set to descend upon the region to take in the world’s most-watched sporting event.

This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jordan Wolman speaks with Chris Dempsey, partner at urban planning firm Speck Dempsey and a former state assistant secretary of transportation who is best known for his work as co-chair of “No Boston Olympics” that successfully pushed the city to abandon its 2024 Olympics bid.

Dempsey launched no such opposition campaign to the city’s push to be selected as one of the World Cup hosts.

“I want to be clear that I have the same moral qualms about FIFA that I did about the IOC,” he said. Those organizations “are not friends of their host cities and do not care about the interests of taxpayers. But there are fundamental differences between an Olympic bid and a World Cup bid. And the biggest difference of course is that you don’t need to build a bunch of venues for the World Cup. That was always our biggest concern.”

That doesn’t mean he’s convinced that the fundamental time, money, and safety and infrastructure upgrades needed to pull off a mega-event like this is in our best interest.

There’s been no shortage of hiccups along the way to the start of the tournament. Right out of the gate, World Cup fans were experiencing sticker shock and frustration at the astronomical ticket prices and seemingly impossible online queues.

Then, the T announced that just getting to Boston Stadium some 22 miles away from downtown by rail wouldn’t be so cheap, either: Fans can purchase an $80 roundtrip train or a $95 roundtrip bus tickets.

There has also been delays issuing licenses from FIFA for watch parties across the state and an intense squabble between soccer’s governing body and the town of Foxborough.

Dempsey, though, is “very defensive” of the T’s need to recoup some of the costs of upgrading Foxborough station and rearranging trains around the system and adding more staff to accommodate match day travel.

It’s the larger “operational” tradeoffs that Dempsey is concerned about because of the preparations the T needs to make for a massive event like the World Cup. That includes reducing commuter rail service in other parts of the system, forcing daily commuters to “bear the brunt of the need for FIFA to shuttle people in and out” of Foxborough.

“I want my MBTA general manager and my transportation secretary … focused on the day-to-day commutes of people in Massachusetts,” he said. “I want him making the long-term decisions about how to improve the transportation system in the Commonwealth.”

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Dempsey is optimistic that the actual event will run smoothly. But don’t expect him to push for Boston to host the Olympics in 2048.

“If the World Cup is like a flesh wound on your municipal budgets, the Olympics would have been like losing a limb,” he said. “It’s two orders of magnitude larger. I will always and consistently oppose the city of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, participating in an Olympic bid because you put way more in than you get out of that kind of event.”

On the episode, they discuss what makes this World Cup selection different from Boston’s Olympic bid (1:52), how the event is impacting the T (5:18), and whether hosting these mega-events is worth it (10:45).

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