The World Cup Effect.
Soccer fans have descended upon North America to take in all of the action of the 2026 World Cup. The United States, Canada and Mexico are all hosting World Cup games this year, and many football stadiums across the country – like in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia Seattle and the San Francisco Bay area – have been transformed into football stadiums for the competition.
Teams from all across the world have set up their base camps in the States (and Canada and Mexico) for the duration of the World Cup. If you’ve been on social media the past week or so, you’ve probably seen that many of the soccer teams from across the pond have struggled to acclimate to the humidity of the southern United States.
Some teams set up in the south – like Uzbekistan (Atlanta, Georgia), Japan (Nashville, Tennessee) and Spain (Chattanooga, Tennessee) – are experiencing hot, American summers at their finest. And while the teams play for the World Cup Trophy, fans from all over the world are taking in all that the United States has to offer (one fan has gone mega-viral doing so).
Up in Boston, Scottish fans are having such a good time that they drained the city’s bars and liquors stores of almost all of their booze.
Yeah, you read that right. Hundreds of thousands of soccer fans have set up shop in Boston, and though the city isn’t hosting any World Cup games (Foxborough is, which is about 30 minutes away), the fandoms of the teams playing group stage games at “Boston Stadium” are staying in the capital of Massachusetts. Those from Scotland that are being called the “Tartan Army” are apparently testing the limits of Beantown.
The Boston Globe reported that many flights from Scotland to Boston ran out of beer on board before they touched down. That wasn’t an anomaly… that was the beginning of a trend. Places throughout Boston that sell beer and liquor – bars and liquor stores alike – have had their supplies exhausted since the start of the World Cup.
An establishment called Hennessy’s Bar said the “Tartan Army” drank every single beer they had this past weekend, and tripled the revenue that the business did on St. Patrick’s Day. A liquor store call Federal Wine & Spirits completely sold out of Budweiser and Corona. Down the road in Providence, Rhode Island, a watering hole was cited saying they’ve been making $2,000 more per day than they normally do.
In other words, World Cups fans are thirsty, and the drinking establishments across the country – and specifically in Boston – have been depleted (and happily so, to say the least).
Safe to say the North American World Cup is already off to a great start, eh? Of course, the negative discourse on social media is all about how much America sucks and how it’s a terrible place to host the World Cup, but from the folks on the ground, it’s been nothing short of incredible. Bar and liquor store owners would probably tell you the same.
The group stages have already started and run through the end of June. Then the round of 32 begins, and the tournament runs all the through the middle of July when the 2026 World Cup Final takes place on July 19 in New Jersey. That’s plenty of time for even more, excessive amounts of alcohol to be consumed.
