Photo by Wagner Meier/Getty Images
How sport connects US to the world
Countdown to World Cup 2026
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As the United States prepares to host the FIFA Men’s World Cup in 2026 and the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028, the Great Game Lab explores the convergence of global sport, media, and geopolitics. We do so through storytelling, research, teaching, and informed conversations.
Set pieces
How sports connect us… what’s your take? Twenty-ish-minute chats with some of the more compelling protagonists in the great game.
Featured
Lamar Hunt’s Delighted Shadow over São Paulo
No one did more to make the NFL the huge success it is today, or to drag it into the international limelight. And no one did more to jump-start American interest in the world’s dominant varietal of football, making the US a deserving World Cup host nation. And so no one would have been more delighted by the spectacle of his hugely popular Kansas City Chiefs opening their regular season in a beautiful World Cup stadium in the South American nation that is practically synonymous with soccer. A festival of all the footballs bringing us together.Explore more
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The Great Game: America's Quest to Conquer Global Sport, and What it Means for Our National 'Soft Power'
As the United States prepares to host back-to-back FIFA World Cups and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, it is becoming something it long resisted: the hub of global sport. For decades, American sporting culture reflected a sense of exceptionalism and isolation—favoring games like baseball and American football, largely absent from the global stage. But that is rapidly changing.
Great Game Lab
Photo by Matthew Ashton - AMA/Getty Images