Additional reporting by Eamon Corbo
For more than a year before the opening match of the FIFA fandango in Mass, officials from sectors spanning public safety to transportation planned for the impending World Cup’s local impact.
That included opening the bidding process for multiple contracts. Many of those hundreds of millions of dollars went to support law enforcement and surveillance, the extent of which will take years to track and measure. But the commonwealth also disbursed about $12 million to cities and towns for the roles they played in flanking the games.
In 2025, state lawmakers established a Sports and Entertainment Events Fund “to support major sports or entertainment events through a competitive grant program.” To get started, the bill tasked the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism with administering a “grant program with $10 million to support costs related to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.”
According to MOTT, “Priorities of the fund include direct and economic impacts on the Commonwealth’s tourism industry, promotion of the Commonwealth in national and international media, and geographic equity.” To ensure the latter, the solicitation for grant applications noted: “By law, no more than 50% of the program’s annual allocation may go to one recipient.”
After two rounds of funding totaling $11,757,000, though, it does not appear that MOTT hit its equity goal. At least not in spirit. The agency technically avoided flouting the 50% guideline, in that no single entity got more than half of the pie, but funds were hardly spread out equally across the state. In the end, after the games wrapped and visiting soccer fans bounced, the money river had mostly gushed toward just two destinations.
What the funding was for
Any public agency, municipality, tribal entity, or nonprofit organization incorporated in Mass was
eligible to apply for MOTT funding. The state was willing to help offset: “Expenses supporting hosting of FIFA World Cup matches”; “Expenses supporting official Fan Fest”; “Expenses supporting team home bases and base camps (i.e. hotels and practice facilities)”; and “Expenses supporting watch parties” that “operate in accordance with FIFA public viewing rules.”
Allowable expenses within those categories included: “Transportation”; “Public safety, Wayfinding and Signage, Services for Disabilities”; “Equity, Inclusion, and Sustainability Efforts”; “Volunteer Support Costs”; “Event Services”; “Sports Marketing”; “Construction, functioning, or operation of a sports or entertainment event.”
So basically just about everything, with the notable exceptions of “prize money, gift cards, scholarships, awards, plaques, or certificates,” as well as “purchases of alcohol, cannabis or tobacco.”
All grants required at least a 1:1 match, meaning the recipient had to raise an amount equal to or more than the grant amount.
How much money Massachusetts gave out
The Sports and Entertainment Events Fund Grant Program anticipated awarding up to $10,000,000 in funding “via a competitive grant process.” In a first grant round which MOTT opened in February 2026, the program handed out exactly that amount. Fund administrators however played fast and loose with the legal guidelines for recipient concentration, or the “50% Rule.”
The request for proposal and enabling legislation mandate that “no more than 50% of the program’s annual allocation may go to one recipient.” The law doesn’t, however, restrict more than half from flowing toward a single city or region; rather, it’s almost as if it was written to favor the single largest applicant.
In round one of this FIFA event funding, the top recipient, Meet Boston received $4.6 million. That single grant represented 46% of the state’s total Round 1 disbursement for the regional tourism nonprofit. All in addition to $4,225,000 to another nonprofit, Boston Soccer 2026, for “Boston Host City Authority events delivery” in Boston and Foxborough. The actual City of Boston also submitted a proposal for “Celebration & Neighborhood Activation,” which brought in another $100,000.
The initial February solicitation stated an intent to fund “up to five watch parties at no more than $400,000 each” in geographically diverse areas. In practice, the program funded at least nine separate watch party projects in round one alone (Easthampton, Everett, Greenfield, Worcester, Lowell, Burlington, Lexington, Weymouth, and the Haitian Community series). Instead of a few large grants, most were small allocations ranging from $10,000 to $120,000.
While technically within the permissible range thanks to the separate grants, the three Boston entities together won almost 90% of the first $10 million, leaving just over a million dollars to split between all other cities and towns.
Round 2
The program lists “geographic equity” as a priority and requires that grants be awarded in a manner that promotes regional balance. But the disparity was even greater in a second round of MOTT funding announced in April.
This time, the City of Boston stepped up to bag the largesse—$1.2 million (68% of the second disbursement) for “FIFA (Team and VIP) Hotels and [the] FIFA Fan Festival.” Had Boston Soccer 2026 or Meet Boston received those funds, either entity would have passed the 50% threshold.
Overall, the MOTT spending was overwhelmingly concentrated in Boston and Foxborough. Between rounds one and two, three Boston-focused entities (Meet Boston, Boston Soccer 2026, and the City of Boston) received $10,125,000, accounting for 86% of all funds.
This article is syndicated by the MassWire news service of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. If you want to see more reporting like this, sign up for BINJ’s free weekly newsletter at binj.news/signup.
