FIFA Was Huge for Dallas. So Why Did Some Small Businesses Struggle?

The FIFA World Cup came to North Texas with enormous promises.

Dallas-Fort Worth was projected to welcome millions of visitors. Nine matches were played at Dallas Stadium in Arlington, and officials promoted the tournament as a once-in-a-generation economic opportunity for North Texas businesses. Early projections put the direct economic impact of the Dallas matches at more than $400 million, with the broader regional impact expected to exceed $1 billion.

So here’s the question many small business owners are asking now:

If FIFA brought that much money into North Texas, why did some businesses have their best summer ever while others felt like their regular business disappeared?

The answer is that a billion-dollar economic impact doesn’t mean a billion dollars gets divided among local businesses.

FIFA created winners. It didn’t create equal winners.

The post-tournament numbers are beginning to show a much more complicated picture.

Downtown Dallas businesses were among the biggest beneficiaries. Restaurants and bars close to the action reported substantial increases, and some had record months. One Dallas restaurant owner described the actual impact as closer to having several extra Cowboys games rather than the nine Super Bowls some people had envisioned.

Another Dallas restaurant group reported that 80% of its additional traffic occurred at its downtown location. Businesses farther from the center of the activity often saw much smaller increases, with some reporting that their customers were primarily local regulars rather than international visitors.

That’s an important distinction.

People don’t spend money evenly across a metropolitan area.

They spend it where they’re staying, where they’re watching the games, where they’re attending events and where they’re being directed by the tournament.

Arlington businesses near the stadium had a different experience from businesses 20 or 30 miles away. Some Arlington businesses reported dramatic increases in sales during the tournament.

The same pattern showed up in other World Cup cities.

Houston, for example, saw mixed results. Businesses located close to the Fan Festival experienced significant increases, while other businesses with plenty of foot traffic didn’t necessarily see the financial windfall they expected.

So when one business owner says, “FIFA was fantastic,” and another says, “FIFA killed my summer,” both can be telling the truth.

The small event business had another problem

This gets even more interesting for photographers, entertainers, DJs, planners, decorators, rental companies, musicians and other independent event professionals.

FIFA did create opportunities for local businesses.

The North Texas FIFA World Cup Organizing Committee specifically created a Business Connect program to connect local suppliers with procurement opportunities. The program included event-related services and encouraged small and locally owned businesses to participate.

But there was a catch.

A large event doesn’t automatically produce thousands of small independent bookings.

Much of the money flows first through:

·       major event producers

·       hotels

·       stadium operations

·       sponsors

·       official fan festivals

·       large corporate activations

·       destination management companies

·       major hospitality organizations

Those companies then hire vendors.

That creates a funnel rather than a flood.

If your business was already connected to those organizations, FIFA could have been an extraordinary opportunity.

If your business depended primarily on weddings, corporate parties, private celebrations and smaller local events, FIFA could actually have disrupted your normal summer business without replacing it with World Cup work.

That’s an important difference.

Some small businesses weren’t losing customers. They were losing their usual customers.

Think about what happened to a typical family or company during the tournament.

People had limited entertainment budgets.

A company that normally held a summer employee party might have redirected money toward a World Cup-related event.

A family that normally hosted a birthday party might have traveled.

A corporate client might have postponed a regular event because executives and employees were traveling or attending tournament-related activities.

And an event planner who normally had a steady stream of smaller bookings suddenly found that some clients were doing something completely different.

That doesn’t show up neatly in a headline about billions of dollars in economic activity.

It shows up as an empty Saturday on an entertainer’s calendar.

The World Cup also concentrated spending geographically

This is probably one of the biggest lessons for small businesses in DFW.

Being in the Dallas-Fort Worth area wasn’t enough.

Being positioned near the right audience mattered.

The businesses that benefited most tended to have one or more of these advantages:

Location.They were close to stadiums, fan zones, hotels or major entertainment districts.

Audience.Their customers were already interested in soccer or international tourism.

Timing.They were selling something people wanted during the tournament.

Visibility.They had positioned themselves as a destination for World Cup visitors.

Connections.They already had relationships with hotels, planners, corporations, sponsors or event producers.

That last one matters enormously for independent event professionals.

The lesson isn’t simply, “Get ready for the next big event.”

It’s:

Get connected before the next big event arrives.

So when does business come back?

This is where I think small business owners need to resist two extremes.

Don’t assume that everything will bounce back immediately because FIFA is over.

But don’t assume that a slow July or August means the market is permanently damaged either.

The tournament ended in July, and we’re now in the first part of the post-World Cup period.

For many DFW event businesses, I would expect the recovery to happen in stages.

August: the reset

August is a difficult month for many event businesses in Texas anyway.

It’s hot. Families are preparing for school. Companies are getting back into their fall schedules. People are recovering from summer travel.

That makes August a poor month to judge the long-term health of the event market.

If your calendar feels unusually quiet right now, don’t automatically blame FIFA.

Some of this is simply the normal summer cycle.

September through October: the first meaningful recovery

This is when I’d expect the regular corporate and private-event market to start feeling more normal.

Companies begin planning fall events, holiday parties, conferences and employee gatherings.

Wedding and social-event activity also begins shifting toward the fall calendar.

For event vendors, September and October are much more useful months for judging whether your normal business has returned.

November through December: the real test

Holiday parties, corporate gatherings, nonprofit events and end-of-year celebrations create another significant event cycle.

If you’re an event professional and your pipeline is still unusually weak by November, I’d stop blaming FIFA.

At that point, the market itself, your positioning, your marketing or your sales pipeline needs to be examined.

That’s actually good news.

Because those are things a business owner can change.

FIFA may have hurt some businesses in the short term while helping DFW in the long term

There’s another piece of this story that doesn’t show up immediately in sales reports.

The World Cup put Dallas-Fort Worth in front of an international audience.

The tournament exposed visitors, corporations and event professionals to the region’s hotels, restaurants, venues, entertainment districts and businesses.

That exposure doesn’t disappear when the final whistle blows.

Dallas officials and the North Texas organizing committee have also emphasized the long-term goal of creating relationships with local businesses and continuing to use those connections for future major events.

That’s where the real opportunity may be.

The World Cup was a giant event. It wasn’t supposed to be the entire event economy.

North Texas will continue to host conventions, corporate meetings, sporting events, weddings, festivals, conferences, fundraisers and private celebrations.

And the businesses that used FIFA to build relationships may continue benefiting from those relationships long after the soccer fans have gone home.

What should small event businesses do now?

Don’t sit around waiting for the “FIFA effect” to wear off.

Use this period to rebuild your regular pipeline.

Reach out to event planners.

Reconnect with venues.

Talk to hotels.

Follow up with corporate clients.

Look at the organizations that produced World Cup-related events and identify the companies and planners that will continue producing events in North Texas.

And don’t sell yourself as someone who was simply available during FIFA.

Sell yourself as a business that makes ordinary events more memorable.

That’s a much bigger market.

The World Cup demonstrated something important about Dallas-Fort Worth:

People will spend money on experiences when there’s a reason to gather.

The next step for small businesses is learning how to become part of the gathering.

The bottom line

FIFA wasn’t a failure for Dallas.

But it also wasn’t the universal small-business windfall some of the early predictions made it sound like.

The money was real.

The visitors were real.

The spending was real.

But the benefits were unevenly distributed.

Downtown businesses, Arlington businesses, soccer-focused businesses, hotels and companies directly connected to tournament activity had an advantage. Other small businesses experienced little benefit and, in some cases, lost some of their normal summer business to the tournament and travel cycle.

For independent event professionals, the next few months are less about waiting for FIFA to “come back” and more about getting back to the business that existed before FIFA.

August is the reset.

September and October are when the market should begin to look more normal.

November and December will tell you much more about the underlying health of the DFW event market.