Donald Trump has already called dibs. Speaking to Fox News during this summer's World Cup final, the US president made his pitch blunt: "We have to do this again and we have to do it while I'm around, you hear that Gianni?" he asked Fifa president Gianni Infantino.
The question is no longer whether the US will host again so soon, but when Fifa will officially make it happen. Inside hotel lobbies and conference rooms across the globe, administrators have spent the past month openly discussing a 2038 bid for the United States, driven not by sentiment but by hard economics.
At a Saturday meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, Infantino laid out the numbers for representatives of Fifa's 211 member associations. The organization's revenue projections for the current four-year cycle jumped from $11 billion to $15 billion, with the overwhelming share of new income flowing from ticketing and hospitality sales. In the US alone, those two categories have generated more than $5 billion, surpassing TV rights revenue for the first time in World Cup history.
"Fifa will want to get back here as quickly as possible," according to a senior figure at one of Fifa's hospitality partners.
But money left on the table tells the real story. Fox Sports received English-language TV rights for the 2026 World Cup without a competitive bidding process, the result of a legal settlement after Qatar 2022 was moved to winter. Fox paid $485 million for those rights, the same amount it had paid for Qatar despite 2026 adding 40 extra matches and hosting on American soil where demand would be astronomical.
For comparison, the NFL's annual domestic TV deal is worth $11 billion, with the NBA pulling in around $7 billion. Fox has already capitalized by selling advertising at record rates this summer, with industry analysts projecting over $1 billion in ad revenue thanks to bumper viewership and expanded commercial inventory from hydration breaks.
Fifa sees that money as rightfully its own. ESPN and NBC are expected to compete aggressively in bidding for the 2030 tournament, while Netflix has begun preliminary discussions about entering the auction after securing women's World Cup rights for 2027 and 2031.
The path to 2038 hinges on Fifa's confederation rotation rules, which have grown more flexible under Infantino's leadership. With the 2030 tournament spread across three continents and six countries (Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay) and Saudi Arabia hosting in 2034, North American bids for 2038 are technically permitted under current policy.
No country has hosted the World Cup twice within 12 years. Fifa's own statutes allow it, but the organization has never tested that boundary until now.
Concacaf, the North American confederation, has expressed reluctance about another exclusive US bid, preferring to rotate hosting among its members. Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Mexico could potentially join a North American bid, though Trump has made clear his preference for sole American hosting.
The real test of Fifa's determination will come in how it handles the bidding timeline. When opening the 2034 process in October 2024, Infantino announced Saudi Arabia as the host just 25 days later, with all Fifa members ratifying the decision at a virtual meeting two months after that. Speed, not deliberation, is the organization's trademark under his leadership.
Infantino will face re-election for a fourth full term at next year's Fifa Congress in Morocco, almost certainly without opposition. After that, the 2038 contest becomes the focal point. One detail hangs over the decision: Trump's second term ends in January 2029, a date that may suddenly feel significant to Fifa's decision makers.
Author James Rodriguez: "The US has become Fifa's cash machine, and the organization isn't waiting around for propriety when billions are at stake."
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