CHICAGO, July 29, 2026 —
While restaurateurs in New York City were hiring additional staff and extending hours to handle a sharp upswing in business from the World Cup, their counterparts in Kansas City, Missouri, were crying in their beer.
An operator survey conducted by the Missouri Restaurant Association (MRA) revealed that 59% of local dining establishments found their city’s hosting of matches during the tournament to be a negative experience.
More than half (51.3%) suffered a decline in traffic, and the same percentage reported a drop in sales.
Like their counterparts in New York, a significant portion (33.3%) of Kansas restaurants added staff. About 30.8% extended their hours of operation to handle an expected surge.
Yet 4 of 5 (81.8%) said the added expenses brought no return.
No explanation was provided by the MRA for the discrepancy between its members’ experiences and what operators enjoyed in the Big Apple, where the New York City Hospitality Alliance found 63% of members who aired the games reported a surge in sales.
The gap could be explained by differences in what the associations asked in their respective surveys. The New York group canvassed members who had aired the games, while the MRA did not limit its universe to establishments that showed the matches on TV.
Yet it wasn’t as if dining places in Kansas City didn’t try to draw in soccer fans. More than half (53.8%) promoted themselves as a place to watch the games, most commonly by hosting special parties.
In analyzing the findings, the MRA suggested that Kansas City operators should learn from the experience that setting reasonable expectations is essential when hosting events like World Cup games. In particular, it noted that projections for a whole market don’t translate into a rising tide lifting all boats.
Rather, it suggested, sales projections should be individualized to a specific restaurant, with such factors as location taken into account.
"The findings are not about assigning blame or questioning the value of hosting world-class events," Trey Meyers, the MRA’s director of marketing and communications, said in analyzing the data. "Kansas City demonstrated that it can successfully host an event of global significance.”