Should Every Sport Have Some Kind of World Cup?

The question is no longer theoretical. From Miami’s loanDepot Park to living rooms tuned to FOX, the World Baseball Classic has shown that when nations collide on a diamond, even a sport that struggles for regular-season attention can command $300 just to walk through the turnstiles. The Marlins can’t sell out a Tuesday night in August, but pit the Dominican Republic against Venezuela with a trophy on the line and the building rocks until the last out.

Major League Baseball noticed. Games migrated from the niche MLB Network to prime-time network television, the tournament field expanded, and stars who once begged off now circle the dates. The calculus is simple: flags create stakes, and stakes create viewers.

Hockey is following the playbook. After a Winter Olympic absence that left the NHL cold, the league is re-embracing best-on-best patriotism: pros will return to the Games, and a rebooted World Cup of Hockey is being treated as something more than a preseason marketing gimmick. Flag football’s impending Olympic debut in Los Angeles 2028 already carries the NFL’s imprimatur. The lone holdout appears to be basketball, where the NBA-controlled league calendar and FIBA’s ownership of the Basketball World Cup dilute the direct financial incentive for the league itself.

Yet the larger trend is unmistakable. International competition offers something preseason exhibitions and All-Star weekends cannot: a narrative that matters beyond the final score. A random regular-season soccer friendly between Arsenal and Chelsea in Atlanta is tourism; the U.S. versus Iran in a World Cup group stage is identity. The former is forgotten by morning; the latter is remembered for decades.

Critics argue that global tournaments risk jingoism, but evidence points the other way. Olympic hockey may briefly dent Canadian maple-syrup sales in American refrigerators, but trade relationships survive. What persists is the memory of a shared moment, the kind that turns casual viewers into lifelong fans and expands a sport’s footprint in markets that previously shrugged.

For administrators searching for relevance, the lesson is clear: if you want eyeballs, hand out passports. Whether it’s cricket in Kolkata or curling in Calgary, nothing accelerates fandom like watching your neighbors represent the neighborhood on a world stage. Every sport, big or small, would be wise to find a way to let countries keep score.