The seven World Cup games scheduled for Gillette Stadium in Foxborough later this year will showcase Massachusetts to the world — hopefully for the better, but possibly for the worse if the event organizers and government agencies involved don’t kick into higher gear soon.
Millions of international visitors are expected to descend on Boston in a few months, with hundreds of millions more watching on TV. On the global stage, will the state prove it can manage events smoothly and well? Or will infighting and stinginess turn the games into a black eye for the state?
So far, planning and fundraising for the games has been slower than expected. But in encouraging news on Wednesday, the town of Foxborough and event organizers ended a lengthy impasse over certain security expenses just before a key deadline on March 17.
The dispute was over $7.8 million Foxborough needs for policing the matches at Gillette (which will be temporarily renamed “Boston Stadium” for the games). The fact that such a question wasn’t sorted out months ago just goes to show how far behind the region is in its preparations.
Foxborough insisted, quite reasonably, that a small town shouldn’t be expected to foot the bill for security for a global sports tournament. Its police had spent more than a year planning for the event and developing the security plan along with other public safety agencies, but only at the last minute did the funding fall into place.
In the agreement, the Kraft Group, which owns Gillette, and Boston Soccer 2026, the organizing committee for the games, said the town “will not incur any cost or financial burden related to the FIFA World Cup, with Boston Soccer 2026 providing advance funding for security-related capital expenditures and the full extent of deployment that public safety officials have determined is needed to execute the event with Kraft Sports + Entertainment’s backing.”
One reason the agreement was necessary was because the federal government, which had been expected to cover many security expenses, has gone AWOL, complicating the task for organizers.
The One, Big Beautiful Bill, which Congress passed last year, set aside more than $600 million for grants to assist cities in hosting the World Cup. About $46 million of that money is earmarked for Massachusetts. But the Department of Homeland Security has yet to distribute it to states, allegedly because of the partial government shutdown that has impacted federal operations. The money for Foxborough could have come from that pot of money.
The city of Boston, where the FIFA Fan Festival is scheduled to be held, is also waiting on federal funds for security and transportation.
Still, the region’s woes can’t all be laid at the Trump administration’s feet.
All told, holding the games was expected to cost $170 million (while also yielding significant economic benefits from the 2 million visitors expected). That money was anticipated to come from a mix of private, state, and federal funds. The host committee is short of those goals, though, as the Globe reported, “exactly how short remains a mystery.”
In a letter to Foxborough before the dispute was resolved, Boston Soccer 2026 said that it has $2 million cash on hand. Though it also said it expects to receive an additional $30 million from state and federal funds, as well as commercial profits, it’s worth asking why the committee, which is dominated by Kraft associates, is so short on funds this close to the start of the games.
Private fund-raising appears to be less than robust, in part because FIFA makes it very difficult to sponsor World Cup games, partly because big corporate donors feel tapped out, and partly because some donors assume the Kraft Group will eventually just come up with the money on its own.
But what if it doesn’t? Well, maybe the fan festival in downtown Boston, which was also slow to come together compared to other cities hosting games, will be smaller. Maybe there won’t be enough trains and buses to get fans to Foxborough. Maybe millions of visitors will go home with a bad impression of Massachusetts.
That would be a missed opportunity.
Earlier this year, football fans returned from the Super Bowl in San Francisco wowed by what they saw there. The city was not the dystopian, feces-ridden hellscape they’d been led to expect.
Well, Massachusetts may not have quite as bad a reputation as San Francisco. But the rest of the country, and the world, has been known to perceive the state as a gridlocked bastion of fun-hating Puritans. The World Cup games and associated celebrations like the fan festival could reinforce that image — or they could help change it.
That’s something all of us should be rooting for.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.