Fan fests and the rise of the experience economy during the biggest soccer matches
Fan fests are turning the World Cup into a city-wide experience, creating new opportunities for SMBs and redefining how fans watch and spend.
Overview: Fan fests are transforming the World Cup into a city-wide, experience-driven event, where millions of fans gather beyond the stadium to watch, spend, and connect. As these spaces scale, they are redefining how fans engage and how businesses, especially SMBs, participate in the tournament economy.
You don’t need a ticket to experience the World Cup anymore. In 2026, millions of fans will gather at fan fests, turning cities into the tournament’s biggest stages.
What began as a workaround for sold-out stadiums has grown into something much bigger. Fan fests have become a defining part of the modern World Cup experience, bringing the tournament's energy to city centers, parks, and public spaces. They are built for scale and designed for atmosphere, combining giant screens, live entertainment, food, and local culture into a shared, all-day event.
And fans are showing up in massive numbers. Across four World Cups between 2006 and 2018, nearly 40 million people attended FIFA Fan Festivals globally. Russia alone drew 7.7 million visitors in 2018, up from around 5.2 million in Brazil in 2014. Even Qatar 2022, with its more compact footprint, attracted 1.86 million attendees on-site.
The appeal is obvious: fans increasingly want to experience major tournaments together in social, open environments, not just from their living rooms or stadium seats. That shift is what makes fan fests so important heading into 2026. They blur the line between spectating and participating, turning the World Cup into something you step into rather than just watch.
Paysafe’s World Cup research report, All the Ways Players Pay - World Cup 2026 Edition, helps explain why. As engagement becomes more immediate and interactive, fans increasingly act in the moment, whether that’s making a purchase or engaging with content as the action unfolds. In that environment, speed and convenience matter. In fact, our research shows that 84% of consumers report being more satisfied when payments are instant, while 44% have abandoned transactions when their preferred payment method wasn’t available.
Fan fests bring all of this together. They are physical spaces built around real-time engagement, where thousands of transactions happen alongside every match, from the first drink to the final whistle.
How fan fests are redefining the World Cup in 2026
The 2026 World Cup will take the fan fest model to the next level. This isn’t just about scaling attendance. It’s about reimagining how the tournament is experienced across entire cities.
For the first time, fan festivals will be held across all 16 host cities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, making them a core part of the event infrastructure rather than an optional add-on. These spaces are being built deliberately, not as overflow for ticketless fans, but as destinations in their own right.
FIFA and host cities design fan fests as “mini-stadiums" with massive screens, curated programs, and full-day schedules beyond kickoff. Fans can spend hours on-site enjoying content, entertainment, food, and social experiences instead of just attending a single match.
The scale will match the ambition, with some locations expecting over 100,000 fans daily, turning public spaces like parks into major gathering points. Unlike stadiums, these are free to enter, with revenue from on-site vendors, activations, and upgrades.
For cities, the World Cup becomes a shared, open experience. For fans, it removes the barrier to entry. And for the tournament itself, it creates a second layer of engagement that runs parallel to every match.
Where SMBs get a cut of the World Cup economy
One of the most important shifts driven by fan fests is who actually benefits from the World Cup.
The fan fest model opens the experience to a broader ecosystem, where small and medium-sized businesses become central to how fans engage and spend.
At a fan fest, the experience is built around local participation:
- food trucks and independent vendors
- regional food and beverage brands
- pop-up retail and merchandise
- local entertainment and activations
- souvenirs and locally-made merchandise
Instead of a closed system, you get a distributed one. Thousands of individual transactions occur across dozens or even hundreds of merchants in a single location.
This has a direct economic impact. Major sporting events consistently drive increased spending in surrounding areas, especially in food and beverage, hospitality, and retail. For SMBs, that can mean sharp revenue spikes, driven by dense foot traffic and longer dwell times as fans stay for hours rather than minutes.
Fan fests amplify that effect. They are designed to keep fans on site throughout the day, not just at kickoff, creating more opportunities for repeat purchases and impulse spending. A single fan might buy multiple drinks, meals, and products from different businesses during one visit.
There’s also an accessibility factor. Because most fan fests are free to enter, they draw a wider, more diverse audience than stadiums. This expands the customer base for SMBs beyond ticket holders to include locals, tourists, and casual fans, all of whom participate in the same space.
Powering the fan fest economy
While fan fests open doors for SMBs, they also introduce new complexity. This is where payments need to do more than just work. They need to keep pace.
At a practical level, that means enabling SMBs to accept payments quickly and reliably, even during peak times. It means supporting a wide range of payment methods, from cards to digital wallets to local options, so international fans can pay the way they prefer. And it means ensuring transactions are seamless, because in a crowded, high-energy environment, any friction can ruin the experience.
This is where Paysafe plays a central role.
Paysafe supports SMBs operating in environments like fan fests with:
- Omnichannel payment acceptance, making it easy to take payments in person and online
- Access to alternative payment methods and digital wallets, helping merchants serve global audiences
- Reliable, high-volume transaction processing built for peak-demand periods
- Secure, trusted infrastructure that ensures payments are processed quickly and without disruption
For SMBs, that means being able to focus on the experience they deliver, not the complexity behind it. For fans, it means moving seamlessly from one moment to the next, from ordering food to buying merchandise to engaging with the event, without interruption.
Fan fests may feel spontaneous, social, and organic. But they rely on a payments layer that is anything but.
Ready to power your payments for the World Cup and beyond? Get in touch with Paysafe to see how we can support your business.
FAQs
What is a World Cup fan fest?
A fan fest is a free, public viewing experience where fans watch matches on giant screens while enjoying food, entertainment, and social activities in a shared space.
Why are fan fests important for businesses?
Fan fests create high foot traffic and constant spending opportunities, allowing SMBs to reach large, diverse audiences and benefit directly from World Cup demand.
