Baltimore isn’t hosting World Cup matches. Maybe that’s for the best.

Swarms of Scottish soccer supporters drinking their way through Natty Bohs at Federal Hill bars sure would’ve been a spectacle. Or fans of underdog darlings like Cape Verde celebrating around the Inner Harbor, indefatigable soccer cheers filling city streets.

Instead, an entertaining 2026 men’s World Cup has begun with Baltimore on the sidelines.

When a joint Baltimore-Washington bid was not selected to host matches at M&T Bank Stadium, the region missed out on witnessing soccer royalty, a boom of foreign visitors, and global eyes on Charm City. Yes, it would’ve been cool.

But as other cities have rudely realized, hosting World Cup matches isn’t for the faint of heart.

Federal, state and local governments have opened up their wallets to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars — and some municipalities have even waived taxes they normally collect.

Local residents have been priced out of exorbitant transit and ticket prices, but hotels are emptier than expected. On match days in Philadelphia, late-booking fans can secure a hotel for only $200.

There are ways in which FIFA steamrolls its local hosts, requiring certain public investments and covering up stadium signage to protect its own brand partnerships. In Dallas, a muralist’s decades-old “whaling wall” got wiped out to make way for World Cup promotional material. He’s suing.

Economists regularly denounce public subsidies for privately owned athletic teams or events. Often, studies show, governments spend taxpayer dollars to lure or satisfy sporting ventures, only for those investments to never pay off.

They’re less pessimistic about the World Cup, though, in part because it attracts consumers to your economy from afar — rather than just redistributing local spending.

This month, sports economists gathered at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for an annual conference. Victor Matheson, a professor of economics and accounting at the College of Holy Cross, said that while the World Cup could be a benefit for the likes of hotel owners, bartenders and soccer fans, there are myriad drawbacks, including congestion and increased public spending on security.

“Baltimore certainly shouldn’t lose any sleep about the fact that they didn’t end up with games,” Matheson said between presentations at the conference.

Really, hosting the World Cup should be an economic slam dunk, since American cities boast the needed infrastructure. Baltimore already has a ready-made site: a stadium that holds 71,000 people. Most countries don’t have such an ideal venue. Last time around, Qatar had to spend billions to construct seven new stadiums.

But little direct revenue goes to hosts. FIFA runs arguably the world’s most popular event, and it knows the leverage it has. It can encourage stadiums, like M&T Bank Stadium, to be tweaked to more adequately host matches, while keeping billions in revenue from TV deals, ticket sales and sponsorships.

The benefit for hosts? Spending at restaurants, hotels and the like, and attention. FIFA reportedly told Los Angeles officials that hosting games would “put your city on the map.”

Soldier Field in Chicago, the third-largest American city and a geographic connector between the coasts, would have made for a logical host. But then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel balked at FIFA’s demands. Soccer’s governing body wanted the bulk of the revenue, he recounted in a recent interview with The Athletic, but asked the city to foot much of the costs — including a potential dome atop the open-air stadium.

“I’m not the smartest businessman, but I’ve passed eighth grade math and the numbers don’t work,” he said.

Phoenix, the fifth-biggest U.S. city, did the same math. The city backed out of a hosting bid “after weighing the potentially astronomical hosting costs against limited tourism benefits,” local officials said in a recent news release.

Still, it’s hard not to feel left out when another city — not Baltimore — is enjoying Lionel Messi score his first, and likely last, World Cup hat trick, or watching DR Congo pull off an unlikely tie against Portugal. Or when Boston, which likely won the final hosting slot over Baltimore, is having its bars and restaurants overrun with Scottish legions.

Baltimore has thrown its hat in the ring for the 2031 men’s Rugby World Cup. But it’s unclear if that bid is active — especially since Terry Hasseltine, who headed the state’s sport tourism arm, abruptly exited his role without explanation in December.

Four years ago, as FIFA unveiled its city selections, Maryland dignitaries gathered for a watch party at M&T Bank Stadium. It had been a yearslong, coordinated effort between city and state officials to reach that point, the brink of being named a World Cup city.

Those festivities turned sour as other cities were announced instead. People slowly left. Later, several microphones were set up for what many expected to be a joyous press conference; instead, only Hasseltine spoke, lamenting the loss.

It still stings for those involved.

Boyd Rutherford, then the lieutenant governor, led the charge to bring games to the city, and he had just finished watching the opening match of the World Cup earlier this month when reached by phone.

“We were robbed,” he said of the bid.

Baltimore would’ve been a superior host to Boston — or rather, Foxborough, the distant suburb where the stadium is — he said. He acknowledged that FIFA is a “difficult group to work with.” But Baltimore’s omission wasn’t a dodged bullet. Rather, it was a missed opportunity for the city to showcase itself.

“It would’ve been a headache,” he said of hosting, “but we would’ve figured it out.”