Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones focused on hosting World Cup championship at AT&T Stadium
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2026 World Cup is coming to Arlington
The ten American venues picked include Arlington’s AT&T Stadium.
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Of course, it was always going to be AT&T Stadium.
The house that Jerry Jones built, home of the Dallas Cowboys, was considered a virtual lock to be one of the host cities before FIFA announced the host North American cities for the 2026 World Cup matches on Thursday.
AT&T Stadium is in Arlington but Dallas was officially named among the 11 U.S. cities as hosts.
An ecstatic Jones compared the Cowboys getting to host the World Cup to winning the Super Bowl, except maybe bigger because of the worldwide attention for AT&T Stadium and North Texas.
“Candidly, I think it’s broader interest from the perspective of Dallas,” Jones said. “It lifts all boats. It’s lifts everything for Dallas.”
Now, the focus is putting on a great show and getting the championship match, Jones said.
“If you put the stakes out there, I like those kinds of challenges,” Jones said. “We want to do everything in our power to have the championship game. In doing so, we will do a great job with whatever games we have there.”
The 48-team World Cup will play 80 matches in the tournament, a change from the 64-match format. Sixty of the matches are set to be played in the U.S., including every quarterfinal match.
Mexico will host 10 matches. Ten more will be played in Canada.
The last time the U.S. hosted the World Cup was in 1994.
The Cotton Bowl in Dallas played host to six matches during the tournament. So North Texas has always been a viable destination for international soccer.
And with AT&T Stadium there was never any doubt that the World Cup was coming back to North Texas.
Since it’s inception in 2009, AT&T StadIum has hosted mega events with national and international interest, including the Super Bowl, the NCAA Final Four, Wrestlemania, the NBA All-Star Game, a number of world championship boxing matches and star-studded concerts.
Soccer was the first sport ever played at the venue.
Costa Rica and Guadeloupe played in an CONCACAF Gold Cup quarterfinals match in July 2009 before the Cowboys played their first football game there later that summer in August.
This day was inevitable.
“The longer I’m in sports the more I realize how important soccer is to this world,” Jones said. “To be able to participate in such an event to have these games is awesome and inspiring. When we built the stadium it was to have great, great events. And it wasn’t just American football.”
This story was originally published June 16, 2022 at 5:44 PM.
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