France will beat Spain in the FIFA World Cup final and claim a third world title, according to Bank of America analysts, but the bank’s own artificial intelligence tool rates Spain as equally likely to win the tournament, which is set to generate up to $41 billion in global economic output and cement sports tourism as one of the fastest-growing industries on the planet.
The prediction comes from a Bank of America Global Research report titled “The Beautiful Game: BofA’s World Cup 2026 Guide,” based on a survey of 65 analysts in the bank’s Global Research department. Around 40% of those surveyed picked France as champions, with Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappé tipped to finish as top scorer. Barcelona and Spain winger Lamine Yamal was the consensus choice for player of the tournament.
Argentina and Brazil received the next highest share of votes among the analysts, while Japan, Norway, and Morocco were most frequently named as potential surprises.
AI splits from the analysts
The human verdict is not the whole story. When Bank of America ran the same question through Microsoft’s Copilot artificial intelligence tool, the result diverged from the analysts’ consensus. The AI rated Spain as equally likely to lift the trophy as France, a finding that surprised many football analysts and reflects the strength of La Roja’s squad following their Euro 2024 triumph.
Banks have had mixed success predicting World Cup winners. In the 2018 tournament in Russia, Goldman Sachs ran a million simulations and forecast Brazil as champions. France won the title while Croatia reached the final, a result the bank had not anticipated. At the same tournament, Japanese financial group Nomura Holdings was the only major institution to correctly forecast France’s victory, using player value, team form, and historical performance as its inputs, though it missed the other three semi-finalists. In 2022, London-based Panmure Liberum correctly predicted Argentina’s victory in Qatar, though it picked England rather than France as their opponents in the final.
The tournament as a sports tourism engine
Beyond the predictions, the BofA report frames the 2026 FIFA World Cup as the most consequential sports tourism event in history. The tournament, running from 11 June to 19 July across 16 host cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is expected to attract 6.5 million in-stadium spectators, nearly double the attendance record of 3.6 million set at the 1994 World Cup in the United States.
A joint study by FIFA and the World Trade Organization, cited in the BofA report, projects that the tournament will contribute up to $40.9 billion to global GDP and support more than 824,000 jobs worldwide. The United States alone is projected to see $17.2 billion added to its GDP and close to 185,000 jobs created. The report notes that sports tourism is now the fastest-growing segment of the global sports industry, which generated $2.3 trillion in revenue in 2025 and is forecast to reach $3.7 trillion by 2030.
International visitors attending the World Cup are expected to spend more than $5,000 per person, 1.7 times the average spend of a typical international tourist to the United States, according to the U.S. Travel Association. One in three visitors plans to stay for more than two weeks, and 80% say they intend to visit destinations beyond the host cities, creating a wide ripple effect across the North American tourism economy.
Uneven gains across host cities
The economic benefits are not expected to be distributed evenly. Research by Oxford Economics found that smaller markets such as Kansas City are forecast to see the largest relative boost in jobs and visitor spending, while major tourism hubs including Miami, New York, and Seattle, which already attract high volumes of international visitors, are likely to see more modest relative gains. Mexico City, Vancouver, and Boston have shown the strongest early growth in international travel intent ahead of the tournament.
There are also broader headwinds. Industry analysts have flagged weaker-than-expected international booking trends in some host cities, with hotel reservations in several markets trailing early projections. High ticket prices, inflationary pressures in key source markets, and geopolitical uncertainty have been cited as factors dampening demand from long-haul travellers, particularly those from Europe and Latin America.
The most lucrative tournament in history
Despite those uncertainties, the financial scale of the 2026 World Cup is unprecedented. FIFA’s original budget for the 2023 to 2026 commercial cycle projected total revenue of $11 billion, representing a 71% increase on the $6.4 billion generated during the 2019 to 2022 cycle that encompassed the Qatar tournament. That original $11 billion projection has since been revised upward twice, with FIFA’s current target standing at $13 billion for the four-year cycle.
The BofA report points to sectors beyond football as among the biggest beneficiaries. Airlines stand to gain from an estimated 66 billion kilometres of accumulated air travel linked to the tournament. Beverages, sportswear, restaurants, broadcasting, and online betting are all identified as sectors positioned to capture significant revenue. The report also identifies the tournament as a landmark moment for artificial intelligence deployment in sport, with all 16 stadiums operating AI-driven command centres and digital twins used to monitor crowd movement, logistics, and security in real time.
The final is scheduled to take place at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on 19 July.
