The World Cup likely provided a boost to demand in the United States over the past several weeks, one that might not be initially picked up in the official economic reports but will likely show up in revisions.
Bank of America looked at its aggregate debit card and credit card usage and found that retail activity was up across the 11 host cities. In the three weeks ending June 27, brick-and-mortar spending at restaurants and bars was up 5.3 percent in host cities and 3.8 percent in the rest of the country. That’s an important change because the host cities had lagged the non-hosts in the three weeks prior.
Importantly, this only captures spending by Americans because the data only covers U.S.-based customers. So all of the spending by foreigners likely came on top of that.
There may have been some offsetting. Boston was so overrun by Scottish fans that several of its largest bars nearly ran out of beer. But the Bank of America data show no increase in spending by Americans. International fans may have crowded out local fans in some places.
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