Fifa’s staging of the World Cup in North America may have been a major commercial success, but it could also have increased pressure on world football’s governing body to make a decisive call on one of the sport’s most contentious issues: domestic leagues moving matches to more lucrative overseas venues.

The biggest men’s World Cup to date broke attendance records, with 6.8 million people attending matches at the first 48-team edition of the tournament. Stadiums were 99.7 per cent full on average, according to official figures, ticket and hospitality sales reached $3bn, and a further 5.5 million people attended Fifa’s fan festivals. If further evidence was needed that the world’s most mature sports market is ready for elite football, this was it.

That message will not have been lost on Europe, where some leagues and clubs, especially in Spain and Italy, have sought to export their product in the hope of building their brands and creating a virtuous cycle of larger audiences and higher media revenue. Those efforts have so far been blocked, but resistance, including from Fifa, appears to be weakening.

“I think the one thing the World Cup has again shown is that American fans will watch and pay for and consume top-tier football,” Adam Dale, a sports lawyer in New York with global firm Winston Taylor, told City AM.

“We see that as [Lionel] Messi makes his rounds in MLS, suddenly stadiums are full. I think it’s because we’re spoiled by the other leagues, right? There’s really no debate that the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL are the top-tier leagues in the world.

“MLS isn’t there, and I don’t know that they ever will be. But it is more of a reason why it makes sense in my mind that some of the top leagues in Europe would want to visit the US in the same way that the NFL plays a few games a year in the UK and the rest of Europe, and one in Mexico. The same way baseball moves around a little bit, basketball moves around a little bit. There’s a desire for it, and I think the World Cup has proven that.”

Why Fifa’s opposition to overseas games cannot hold

Fifa’s blanket refusal to approve overseas games was broken in 2023 after a long-running antitrust case brought by marketing agency Relevent, which has staged pre-season matches for European clubs in the US and has a long-term agreement to help Spain’s LaLiga expand in America.

Fifa, along with co-defendant US Soccer, agreed to settle with Relevent and establish a working group to examine the conditions under which overseas games might be permitted. Two years later, that group has still not reported its recommendations, but interest in the idea has not faded.

LaLiga and Italy’s Serie A both scheduled overseas matches last season, in the US and Australia respectively. European governing body Uefa approved both plans, but said it did so reluctantly and only because Fifa’s rulebook did not give it enough legal grounds to block them. The plans were later abandoned after backlash and internal wrangling, at least for now.

According to a report first published by the Guardian, Fifa’s working group has discussed allowing leagues a maximum of one overseas match and limiting countries such as the US to hosting five visiting fixtures per season. Any recommendations would still need approval from the Fifa Council, but the World Cup’s success is likely to have made advocates such as LaLiga president Javier Tebas even more determined to move quickly. For clubs and leagues, the attraction is straightforward: access to new fans and commercial partners in a market that has just shown it can fill major stadiums for elite football; for Fifa, the challenge is balancing that momentum against concerns over competitive integrity and domestic supporters.

Inevitable — but not for the Premier League

“I do think it is inevitable that they will be allowed,” Dale said. He represented Relevent in its antitrust case with Fifa, but is not permitted to discuss the details.

“Whether leagues, federations and players ultimately decide that it’s something they’d like to do is a different question. But currently it’s not permitted and I think there will be an opening of the door.”

LaLiga and Serie A are seen as the most eager to take matches overseas, with France’s Ligue 1 possibly next in line, according to insiders. The Premier League, after the backlash to its own abandoned “39th game” proposal nearly 20 years ago, has little reason to risk reputational damage when it is already by far the richest domestic league in world football. Germany’s Bundesliga would likely face strong opposition from its highly mobilised fan bases if it tried the same.

In the end, it appears that only Fifa can stop overseas games — but perhaps not for long. Even taking into account its sometimes unilateral approach to decision-making, the success of its flagship tournament has only made the US market more attractive to European leagues and clubs pursuing their American dream.

“Fifa’s Fifa, they could do whatever they want. They’ll find a clause,” Dale said when asked whether the door to overseas games could be shut again. “I think it would be a very very poor decision, both legally and from a public relations perspective, for Fifa to do that.”