The 2026 FIFA World Cup is shaping up to be the most commercially ambitious tournament in the history of global sport.
Expanded to 48 teams and hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the event represents FIFA’s clearest attempt yet to fuse scale, geography, and revenue into a single mega-sporting product. At the centre of this expansion lies an unprecedented USD 727 million prize money pool, a 50 per cent jump from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, designed to distribute wealth deeper into the global football ecosystem.
Yet, while this financial framework promises transformation for participating nations, it also starkly exposes the growing divide between football’s elite and countries like India, where institutional instability and sporting underperformance have ensured that the World Cup remains a distant spectacle rather than a tangible opportunity.
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FIFA’s 2026 prize structure reflects a deliberate shift towards making qualification itself economically meaningful. Of the USD 727 million, around USD 655 million is allocated as performance-based prize money, with every qualified team also guaranteed an additional USD 1.5 million to cover preparation costs. This means that each of the 48 participating nations will earn a minimum of USD 10.5 million, even if they exit at the group stage.
For smaller footballing nations, this sum can exceed their entire four-year operating budget, enabling long-term investment in grassroots development, coaching education, and infrastructure. The champions will earn a record USD 50 million, while even teams finishing bottom of their groups will take home USD 9 million in prize money, before the preparation grant is added.
Historically, this represents an extraordinary leap. In 1982, Italy earned just USD 1.4 million for winning the World Cup. Even as recently as 2010, Spain’s triumph was worth USD 30.1 million. The 2026 cycle marks the culmination of four decades of accelerating commercialization, driven by broadcast rights, sponsorship expansion, and the emergence of new football markets.
Asia’s Expanded Door and India’s Failure to Walk Through It
The expansion to 48 teams significantly altered the Asian qualification landscape. The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) was allocated eight direct World Cup slots, with an additional inter-confederation playoff place. On paper, this was the most realistic pathway India has ever had to qualify for a FIFA World Cup.
Instead, the 2026 cycle became a case study in squandered opportunity.
India’s campaign showed early promise with a historic away win against Kuwait, but quickly unravelled. Failure to defeat Afghanistan across two matches, combined with an inability to capitalise on key moments against Qatar, proved decisive. The controversial goal conceded in Doha where the ball had clearly crossed the byline before being dragged back into play became a symbolic moment, but it merely masked deeper issues: poor finishing, lack of composure, and an absence of game management at critical junctures .
Crucially, elimination from World Cup qualification also meant India failed to secure direct qualification for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup, pushing the national team into a secondary route that would later end in further humiliation.
From Sporting Failure to Institutional Crisis
The post-qualification fallout exposed the fragility of Indian football’s structure. The retirement of Sunil Chhetri in 2024 created a leadership vacuum that the system was ill-equipped to fill. Coaching instability followed, with Igor Stimac’s exit and the ill-fated dual-role appointment of Manolo Márquez destabilising both the national team and club ecosystem.
By late 2025, India found itself not only eliminated from the Asian Cup but also embroiled in a commercial crisis. The expiration of the Master Rights Agreement (MRA) between the AIFF and FSDL brought the Indian Super League to a standstill, threatening player livelihoods and club survival. The ISL being placed “on hold” was unprecedented and highlighted how dependent Indian football had become on a single commercial partner rather than a sustainable, merit-based pyramid .
Although a temporary resolution was reached under judicial supervision, the damage was already done. Missed competitions, declining rankings, and loss of credibility have all but shut India out of the top tier of Asian football for the current cycle.
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The contrast with regional peers is telling. Indonesia, through aggressive governance reform and strategic use of diaspora talent, reached the final stages of Asian qualification for the first time in decades. Thailand, meanwhile, has built a sport-tourism-driven club ecosystem that consistently feeds a competitive national team. Both countries have leveraged football not just as a sport, but as an economic and cultural asset.
India, by comparison, has struggled to align governance, domestic leagues, and national team objectives into a coherent whole.
The Cost of Absence
The most sobering reality is this: India will receive none of the USD 727 million World Cup windfall. Not even the minimum USD 10.5 million participation payout. This is not merely a financial loss, but a generational opportunity cost. That money could have underwritten grassroots academies, coaching pathways, and women’s football expansion areas where India continues to lag.
The expanded World Cup was meant to democratise opportunity. Instead, it has amplified the consequences of failure. The 2026 FIFA World Cup represents football at its most powerful economically, politically, and culturally. For 48 nations, it will redefine futures. For India, it serves as a mirror reflecting decades of short-termism, governance paralysis, and missed reform.
Until Indian football bridges the gap between vision documents and institutional reality, the riches of global football will remain something to watch, not participate in. The lessons of 2026 are clear.
Whether they are finally acted upon will determine if this absence becomes a turning point or just another chapter in a long pattern of decline.
