Arlington collected $31 million in hotel occupancy tax in June 2026 alone, mayor Jim Ross told the Fort Worth Report on 27 July, beating the city's previous all-time high of $23.5 million set in November 2024 1. Arlington, a Texas city of about 400,000 between Dallas and Fort Worth, staged nine matches at AT&T Stadium. Hotel occupancy tax is a levy on room nights, collected monthly and paid into the city treasury, which makes it one of the few tournament numbers that already exists as cash rather than as a model.
Nine days after the final, Arlington has published nothing else. Monica Paul, president of the North Texas organising committee, told the same publication that the actual economic impact total will not be available for "many months" while state and business data are compiled. Pre-tournament estimates put Arlington's own gain at $160 million and the regional figure at $1.5 to $2 billion, and neither has been tested against anything 2.
Gianni Infantino put the nine Arlington matches at 631,843 spectators. More than 40,000 people used dedicated World Cup rail and charter services. The Fort Worth Stockyards, the historic livestock district north of the city, logged 1.8 million visitors across the tournament span, up 44.7% year on year. Attendance and footfall are what the city can count today; the money runs behind them.
FIFA's own headline figures reached the public a week earlier through wire pickups rather than a release from Zurich . What is arriving now comes instead from whoever had a reason to count: a mayor with a tax line, a visitor bureau with a turnstile, a committee that will hire consultants. Each of them is counting a different thing, and the one number that would let a resident judge whether the nine matches paid for themselves is the one still being modelled.
