World Cup travel creates more emissions than the tournament itself – Earth.com
07-18-2026
World Cup travel creates more emissions than the tournament itself
ByJordan Joseph
Earth.com staff writer
The biggest climate cost of the 2026 FIFA World Cup may not come from the matches themselves, but from getting millions of fans to the stadiums
A new study estimates the tournament will generate about 4.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions
More than 80% of those emissions are expected to come from spectator travel, mostly by air
The finding gives event organizers a way to weigh what an event is worth against the climate damage it causes, and to decide who should pay
It also means the biggest emissions cuts have little to do with the stage or the pitch, and everything to do with how fans travel
Large international events have long been criticized for their heavy carbon footprints, and the sharpest complaints tend to land on football’s biggest tournament
A team of economists set out to measure exactly where that climate damage comes from
Professor Shaun Larcom at the University of Cambridge worked with colleagues to build a method for pinning down an event’s true emissions
They tested it on two very different cases: the 2026 World Cup, held across the United States, Canada and Mexico, and Coldplay’s 2024 European tour
For the World Cup, almost all of the damage comes from moving people, not from building or running anything
The high cost of flying
Travel accounts for roughly 82% of projected emissions, and international flights are the largest single share
The rest barely registers. Stadiums, hotels, and food together add up to less than a fifth
The scale is easy to feel in per-person terms. The average attendee will be responsible for about 1.8 metric tons of carbon dioxide, roughly a third of what a typical European emits in a whole year
Coldplay’s tour tells the same story in even starker terms. About 97% of its emissions came from fan travel, while the band’s own touring operation accounted for only around two percent
That pattern is well documented. One study of German football fans found a single season of match-day travel produced hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon, most of it from cars
Value compared to damage
To judge whether an event is worth its climate damage, the researchers needed a figure for the value it creates
They found one in resale ticket markets. When fans pay far above face value to get in, that gap shows how much the experience is really worth to them
Coldplay’s resale prices ran, on average, at nearly five times their face value. Fans clearly wanted in
Across 1.9 million tickets, that adds up to roughly $860 million in value beyond what they paid, a number that dwarfs the tour’s climate cost
On the other side sits the price of the carbon itself. Economists estimate a “social cost of carbon,” a dollar value for the harm each ton does through heat, crop losses and rising seas
Measuring climate harm
Markets almost everywhere charge far less than that estimated cost. One widely cited paper put the figure near $185 a ton, about triple what U.S. regulators were using at the time
Run those numbers, and the World Cup’s climate damage comes to about $790 million, with Coldplay’s unreduced tour near $20 million
Set against the value fans place on attending, both events still come out well ahead
Coldplay’s benefits outweigh its climate costs by roughly 50 to one. The World Cup’s margin is far slimmer, at about three to one
That thinner margin makes the tournament more sensitive to carbon pricing
The tournament tips into net loss once carbon is valued near $550 a ton, close to the top of published estimates
Meanwhile, Coldplay’s tour would need a figure many times higher to reach the same point
Sharing the responsibility
Most of that damage flows from decisions fans make on their own. They decide which airport to leave from or whether to drive or take the train
That makes responsibility hard to assign. Putting all of it on fans, though, lets organizers ignore emissions their event brought into being
Larcom and his colleagues argue the load should be shared between the two. Coldplay shows what that can look like
The band cut its overall footprint by nearly half, yet almost none of that came from cleaning up its own operations
Greener ways to travel
The real gains came from persuading fans to travel greener, through an app that rewarded lower-carbon journeys
Concern over the climate toll of big events has been building, and one analysis found that hosting the Olympics leaves a measurable mark on a country’s emissions
Location is the biggest lever for the World Cup, where about 82% of emissions trace to travel
Location matters most
Around 40% of international fans come from Europe, so holding more of the tournament there would cut long-haul flights sharply
Paying for the damage directly is harder to do fairly. Folding the full carbon cost into tickets would add about $11 to a Coldplay seat and around $114 to a World Cup one
A flat charge like that hits cheaper tickets hardest. For the lowest World Cup categories, it could exceed the price many fans are willing to pay
The researchers put carbon offsets last on their list, useful only for emissions nothing else can remove
Change could happen
The study makes one thing clear. The climate problem with mega-events sits in the stands, not on the field
There is now a single way to measure that damage against how much people value being there. Organizers no longer have to guess whether an event earns its footprint
That opens practical doors. FIFA could copy the travel incentives Coldplay used, rewarding fans for cleaner journeys and clustering matches to shorten flights
The slim margin on the expanded tournament is its own caution. A bigger World Cup adds value, but its climate costs outweigh its benefits
The larger takeaway is simple. Cleaning up entertainment is less about the show than the journey to it
For events that pull crowds across oceans, the surest win is helping those crowds travel differently or hosting the event closer to where they already are
The study is published in Communications Sustainability
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