2026 FIFA World Cup Leads DFW Sports Projects Presenting 'Phenomenal Opportunity'

As the calendar moves closer to Dallas-Fort Worth hosting nine matches as part of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, commercial real estate professionals are touting the impact the Metroplex is already experiencing and looking forward to the opportunity that will follow once the tournament concludes.

On Wednesday, Dallas scored the tournament's International Broadcast Center — a hub for media covering the World Cup — from January of next year through the end of play in July. The announcement was anticipated after Dallas City Council approved spending $15M to prepare the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center for the broadcast center last year.  

The economic impact of the World Cup is expected to come in at around $2B for North Texas. But it is just one of a host of sports-related projects coming to DFW in the years ahead.

Another is the Metroplex’s WNBA team, the Dallas Wings, moving from Arlington to Downtown Dallas this year to play in the Dallas Memorial Auditorium at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. That $19M agreement will keep the team in Downtown Dallas for 15 years and see the arena transformed into what's being called a world-class venue for women's sports.

Industry leaders talked about what to expect from those deals as well as what can be done to future-proof developments after the World Cup has come and gone at Bisnow’s DFW State of the Market event Thursday at the Westin Galleria in Dallas.

The influx of teams, spectators and media from around the world due to the World Cup will bolster the region’s hospitality industry and bring in a raft of new hotels, said Greg Perry, RREAF Holdings vice president of hospitality investments. 

“Supply is going to be a key thing to watch, but [hotels] are going to come in because this incredible amount of demand will come in,” Perry said. “For an international audience to see and experience what DFW has to offer could only help all of the initiatives that are going on all around us.”

The impact of the World Cup and the International Broadcast Center on DFW won’t be limited to hospitality. Gensler principal Scott Armstrong called it a “phenomenal opportunity” for the retail sector and the region as a whole.

“Having the international stage sitting here … is really going to be a way of showing just the great amount of economic power that DFW has,” Armstrong said.

While that onslaught of visitors will create a huge demand throughout the Metroplex next year, Peachtree Group Development Investments Assistant Vice President John Schellhase said the lasting benefits derived from the World Cup is what’s truly game-changing.

“It's about the infrastructure. It's about the visibility. It's about the publicity,” Schellhase said. “That's what's really exciting and great for Dallas-Fort Worth.”

The activity will inevitably lead to projects designed to capitalize on the region's temporary population increase, but FIFA has a history of leaving new training centers, restaurants and museums in its wake for communities to use in the future, Arch Amenities Group CEO Barry Goldstein said.

“You're going to see a lot of leave-behinds, which are going to drive a lot of growth and a lot of international travelers into the spaces that FIFA [uses].” Goldstein said. 

Some of those projects could get put to use for other sports, just like the Dallas Memorial Auditorium is being repurposed for the Dallas Wings.

The popularity of women's sports has surged in the U.S., and that growth is fueling new development as well as redevelopment of venues and training facilities across the country, according to JLL. National Women’s Soccer League team the Kansas City Current made history last year when its $117M stadium opened as the first in the world built specifically for a women’s professional team.

The Dallas Memorial Auditorium, the Wings' new home, is a landmark piece of the city’s history, Armstrong said. It has hosted musical acts like The Beatles, Elvis Presley and The Rolling Stones, and also served as the home to an American Basketball Association team in the late 1960s. 

“We're seeing, obviously, a huge movement towards women's sports,” Armstrong said. “Dallas being out in front of that and saying, ‘This is important and we're going to invest money into this’ really says a lot about who we are as a community.”

Developers will be keeping an eye on the flexibility of projects because of the uncertainty of the future. The best way to future-proof projects is to cater to how people will get to buildings, including adding large sidewalks, Nack Development President and CEO Donny Churchman said. 

“The one thing we focus on whenever we’re designing is it's got to be female-centric,” Churchman said. “We're always trying to activate areas, and [they’re] going to activate the area.”

Billingsley Co.’s 1,000-acre Cypress Waters master-planned development in Coppell is one example of a project that has 24/7 activation while still offering flexibility, Armstrong said. 

“That has activation throughout the residential piece, the retail piece, the office piece, but also is … bringing people there during the weekends for a concert or a community event,” Armstrong said. “Those are all parts and pieces that as the markets flow, they're allowed to look at what is there and be flexible on what is the demand.”

In the hotel space, Schellhase said it’s important to be mindful of yield on cost and making sure what’s being built can be supported because there are a lot of unknown elements that can’t be controlled. 

Future-proofing has to be a mentality, along with good financial planning, Perry said.

“As much as we love the places that we design, we have to be willing to let it go if we find that it doesn't work,” Perry said. “If you have a good capital expenditure program, you'll have the wherewithal to change when the time comes and to have a space that is allowed to be flexible.”