On Friday, just hours before President Donald Trump and FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s latest joint briefing in the White House, the MGM Resorts group in Las Vegas received a courtesy correspondence. It came from FIFA. It was a short and generic email. It said, essentially: Thank you, but no thank you.
The expectation of many involved in next summer’s World Cup plans had been that the competition’s draw would take place in Las Vegas. There had, however, always been a but that never went away.
That but, first reported by The Athletic in April, was that Washington, D.C. — and, more precisely, Infantino — wanted to ensure it would be easy for Trump to participate in the draw, if he wished.
On Friday afternoon, that suspicion finally crystallized when, in a remarkable news conference in the Oval Office, Trump announced the draw would take place at the Kennedy Center, the performing arts and events space in D.C. According to sources familiar with the discussions, who wished to remain anonymous to protect relationships, the venue was suggested by Trump’s administration, and Infantino fell into line, despite numerous FIFA officials preferring Las Vegas. FIFA declined to comment, and a White House spokesperson did not directly address the point, instead sending through a transcript of Friday’s press conference.
During his second term, Trump became the chairman of the Kennedy Center, named after the 35th U.S. President, John F. Kennedy. In February, Trump railed against the content shown at the venue, saying: “We don’t need woke at the Kennedy Center.”
President Trump spoke at a Kennedy Center event on August 13 (Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the center would have “no more drag shows or anti-American propaganda.” His administration removed 18 board members who had been appointed by his predecessor, Joe Biden, to what used to be a bipartisan board, while appointing those loyal to Trump, such as his chief of staff Susie Wiles and Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance. He revealed last week that he will host the upcoming Kennedy Center Honors ceremony and said he turned down “wokesters” as potential award-winners.
Rep. Bob Onder (R-MO) last month introduced the Make Entertainment Great Again legislation, which seeks to rename the Kennedy Center after Trump. Onder said he would be “hard-pressed to find a more significant cultural icon in the past 40 years” than Trump, while Trump joked about the name change in Friday’s news conference alongside Infantino.
FIFA’s choice of venue for their World Cup draw represents the latest episode of FIFA appearing to bend over backwards to please Trump.
This summer, FIFA opened an office in Trump Tower in New York City, choosing it instead of other office space it had considered in the Empire State Building. The Club World Cup final culminated in a ceremony in which Trump presented Premier League team Chelsea with the trophy. He joined in the trophy lift and then took the ornament back to the White House, where it still resides in his office, along with a winner’s medal. Infantino formed part of a bizarre event in the Oval Office in June, when the Italian team Juventus — with its owner, chief executive and leading players in tow — was taken along to a press conference with Trump on the afternoon of their Club World Cup match against Al Ain in D.C.
Over the past six months, The Athletic has spoken frequently with individuals involved in the negotiations for the draw venue. FIFA has remained publicly tight-lipped about where it would hold its draw for the 48-team competition. Negotiations with venues in Las Vegas advanced, and the direction of travel was such that the U.S. Soccer Federation even reserved an events space and hotel rooms as they sought to host a soccer-specific conference around the draw, when many key stakeholders were expected to be in the city. The plans were so advanced that save-the-date messages were sent to key personnel.
James Brown lit up a glitzy Las Vegas draw for the 1994 World Cup (Shaun Botterill / ALLSPORT)
A Las Vegas draw would have meant a re-run of sorts for the 1994 edition of the men’s World Cup, the only previous occasion when the United States had hosted the competition. It was a star-studded, highly Americanized edition of the draw, featuring Las Vegas appearances from James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Barry Manilow, Sir Rod Stewart and Robin Williams. President Bill Clinton appeared via video.
Along the way, other locations were quickly ruled out. In January, Alejandro Hutt, the director of the host committee in the Mexican city of Monterrey, told ESPN how it, and the Canadian city of Vancouver, had registered an interest in hosting the draw but were told by FIFA the event would be taken elsewhere. Canada and Mexico are each due to host 13 of the 104 World Cup games in a tournament spread across North America, yet Infantino is far more frequently seen rubbing shoulders with Trump than his Canadian or Mexican counterparts.
The Athletic has been frequently told in recent months that sporting and political leaders in Canada and Mexico have been irritated by their increasingly diminished profile around the build-up to next year’s tournament and Friday’s events, which saw the draw location announced by one country’s leader, is unlikely to have helped matters.
Trump, who was in his first presidential term when the joint bid for 2026 won in 2018, joked on Friday that the U.S. “did a little” for Canada and Mexico by allowing them to share the tournament. “See, I’m a good citizen,” he laughed. “I said, ‘Let them have a little piece.’ So, we gave a little to Canada. See how nice I am? And we gave a little bit to Mexico.”
Within FIFA, many leading officials liked the idea of returning to Vegas, tapping into the nostalgia of ’94 while having the latitude to create a festival-style event that could make a national impact — even amid the NFL season — beyond the names being plucked out of a bowl. They spoke privately of wanting to turn the draw into an entertainment spectacle, mirroring the excitement experienced during drafts in North American sports. FIFA trialled certain Americanisms during the Club World Cup: introducing NBA-style individual walk-ons for players, hiring Michael Buffer for a pre-game “Let’s get ready to rumble!” and producing a half-time show during the final at MetLife Stadium.
In 2024, the NHL held its draft at The Sphere, a $2.3 billion, 18,000-seat venue in Las Vegas. This was among FIFA’s list of target venues but was rapidly ruled out, likely due to the costs involved. T-Mobile Arena, home of hockey’s Vegas Golden Knights, was another option FIFA liked, but the NHL regular-season schedule had not yet been released, making it hard to plan.
FIFA asked about the smaller Dolby Live arena — a 6,400 capacity — but MGM wished to hold the venue for residencies and holiday concerts, particularly eager to entice Mariah Carey back.
FIFA was not only competing for venues in Las Vegas but for hotel rooms. December is a popular time for tourists, but Las Vegas hosts the National Finals Rodeo between Dec. 4-13 at the Thomas & Mack Center. In 2024, more than 170,000 people attended the event across 10 days. Amazon’s 60,000-person conference event, AWS re:Invent, is being held in Las Vegas between Dec. 1-5. Talks were held with resorts and Amazon to clear the required space for hotel rooms.
The Sphere in Las Vegas was discounted as a World Cup draw option, likely because of cost (Daniel Slim / AFP via Getty Images)
FIFA held extensive negotiations with the 17,000-seat MGM Grand Garden Arena, and a deal was close in May, only for FIFA to stall for several months while weighing up its options. As first reported by Sports Travel Magazine, a group — which The Athletic understands to be MGM — held back thousands of hotel rooms for FIFA’s benefit, right until the middle of August when they could no longer afford to risk leaving rooms empty during the holiday season.
FIFA held conversations with Resorts World, which briefly became the favorite. As the summer months passed, MGM lost faith in the Grand Garden Arena’s chances. FIFA then went cold on Resorts World, too, which left that group frustrated by FIFA’s approach to communication. It all led several venue executives in Las Vegas to suspect FIFA might be taking the event elsewhere this month. One joked privately that the event may end up in Mar-A-Lago, the club and residence owned by Trump in Florida, such is FIFA’s apparent cosiness with the president, while whispers of D.C. returned over the past two weeks.
On Friday morning, MGM was thanked by FIFA for its part in the process, and they were disappointed, to put it mildly, at the outcome. Resorts World did not respond to a request for comment, while MGM declined to comment.
The news confirming the pivot from Las Vegas on Friday attracted frustration from key stakeholders. The Athletic has learned that multiple host city committees in the U.S. are exasperated by FIFA’s decision. They had never been formally told that Las Vegas would be the destination, but it had been hinted at in some discussions. The host cities liked Las Vegas partly because it would have been seen as more politically neutral than an event space chaired by Trump in D.C. They wanted to entertain prospective sponsors in Sin City, while D.C. is perceived as a more dry experience.
Some host city executives are even unsure whether they will attend the draw, when they could make more exciting watch-along events for sponsors in host cities. The disappointment of the host cities is expected to come through loud and clear during an upcoming workshop with FIFA officials in Houston. The cities were not consulted and only discovered the news shortly before the news conference on Friday. Some feel that the Kennedy Center, while steeped in heritage, is more suited to a black-tie event or an arts performance than the type of party atmosphere they want to launch the World Cup. US Soccer, meanwhile, is working to pivot its own conference out of Las Vegas and into D.C.
While conversations advanced with Vegas, the background noise of D.C. did not go away. The Athletic reported in April how some within FIFA had internally floated the White House as a slimmed-down choice of venue. This, however, would have been logistically testing, particularly given the size of the event, which usually requires thousands of attendees, while the security operation involved — particularly given some of the strained relations with certain countries that could be in attendance — may have posed challenges. Sponsors may also have been uneasy about placing their products inside such an explicitly political venue. Some sources in Las Vegas wondered whether the D.C. threat may be a negotiating tactic by FIFA, aimed at maximizing concessions from resorts.
President Trump with the World Cup during Friday’s Oval Office announcement. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
After all, Trump, who has a hotel in Las Vegas, could have travelled to the draw. He sent a video message for the FIFA Club World Cup draw held in Miami in December 2024, during an event that his daughter Ivanka, son-in-law Jared Kushner and grandson Theo attended. Ivanka and Theo even made the ceremonial first picks of the draw.
Right now, the Kennedy Center — or the Trump-Kennedy center, as it may or may not soon be known — is the president’s territory, and we should never underestimate Infantino’s desire to impress Trump. Infantino held his closing press conference of the Club World Cup in the gold-plated lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan. He attended Trump’s inauguration this year and posted 10 times that week on Instagram about the new U.S. president, even wearing a red tie to Sunday’s pre-inauguration rally. We can expect Trump to be front and center once more when the draw comes on Dec. 5.
“The Kennedy Center will give (the World Cup) a phenomenal kickoff,” Trump said. “And we’ll be involved, and they’ll be working over there for quite a bit of time. We have it all set that they can stay there for the big events, the big press conferences, and everything else.”
(Top photo: Annabelle Gordon / UPI / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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