President Victor Montagliani says, with the World Cup coming to North America in 2026, the benefits to CONCACAF members and the wider FIFA family could be enormous.

With the successful ‘United 2026’ bid announced on Wednesday at the FIFA Congress in Moscow comes the promise of record profits, which would in turn fatten FIFA’s coffers.

Though the figures are flexible and arrived at on some fundamental indicators, leading up to the vote the ‘United 2026’ bid pitched a possible profit of somewhere in the region of US$11 billion.

With the healthy projections from a World Cup co-hosted by the USA, Mexico and Canada, it is clear that member associations would be in line for a financial windfall from FIFA’s Forward Development Programme.

In the case of the 41-member CONCACAF, increased funding, spurred by a commercially successful 2026 World Cup, would be a welcome benefit for all, especially the tiny countries of the Caribbean.

“The profits that a 2026 World Cup will yield will be massive for the FIFA Forward Programme, which obviously the Caribbean members benefit from greatly which is no different from any other member of CONCACAF.

“But I think over and above that, what it does is give Caribbean nations an opportunity to focus their development programmes and also any infrastructure programmes because we do have a World Cup in our back yard, so I think with that kind of focus it makes these programmes and the execution of those programmes easier,” Montagliani told the Jamaica Observer shortly after the North American bid beat back that of Morocco 134-65.

Winning the right to host the World Cup, the CONCACAF boss noted, “is nothing short of spectacular”, and he put it all into context.

“Obviously for the bidding nations it’s a platform to grow the game, but more importantly it’s a massive platform for CONCACAF, the Caribbean nations and Central America.

“To have an eight-year run where we can build on our League of Nations, our other leagues, our Champions League and other club competition; they (all CONCACAF members) can now have a ‘North Star’ to shoot for. It’s a fantastic platform and so immense for us,” Montagliani said from Moscow on Wednesday.

A World Cup hosted in North America had obvious viable benefits over the Morocco bid from the get-go and was always the favourite to get the nod from the majority of the FIFA congress.

“The North American market, if you combine those markets, it’s almost 38 per cent of the world’s economy… we see from a ticketing standpoint that the sustainability is there, and obviously what helps, too is that the expenses are not there because we don’t have to build any stadiums, so with the economic formula, it is not that hard to reach those numbers (projected revenues and profit),” the Canadian Montagliani noted.

The 2026 World Cup will be historical on at least two fronts. It is the first time 48 teams will be competing and the first time three countries will co-host football’s showpiece, often labelled as “the greatest show on earth”.

“It is a great responsibility [organising 48-nation World Cup in three countries], but it is also an opportunity to show how this co-hosting model can work in the future for other countries who have the aspiration to get a piece of a World Cup.

“By having that model, I think it is going to serve some purpose in the future for other countries who might want to do that [co-host]. In fact Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay have already announced their co-hosting bid for 2030, so you see people are already jumping on the bandwagon,” explained the FIFA vice-president.

Montagliani noted that the North America zone already had a culture of cross-border collaboration, which he thinks will serve the World Cup effort well.

“I think it will be highly successful as the countries [USA, Mexico, Canada] have a lot of experience in a type of cross-border relationship, may it be in professional leagues like soccer, baseball, hockey,” he stated.

The last time the global event came to North America, the USA hosted in 1994. Prior, Mexico hosted in 1970 and 1986.

Of the three, only Canada has not hosted the senior men’s tournament, but the vast North American country can boast of its hosting pedigree having welcomed the world for the senior women’s World Cup in 2015.

Meanwhile, of the 211 FIFA member nations that voted to select the 2026 hosts, 200 cast a vote at the 68th FIFA Congress, with the winning bid needing a majority of 104.

Canada, Mexico, Morocco and the US were exempt, while Ghana was absent after the country’s government said it had disbanded its football association amid allegations of “widespread” corruption.

Three US territories — Guam, the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico — were among the other member nations to not vote.