⚽ World Cup 2026 kicks off across the US, Mexico, and Canada
🚀 SpaceX pulls off the biggest IPO ever — $75 billion
🛢️ Inflation still running hot — CPI at 4.2%
📚 Reading “The Algorithm” by John McNeill
🎥 Watching “Your Friends & Neighbors S1”
YTD Portfolio Performance: +21.17% YTD

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about who actually gets to enjoy the World Cup. Today was opening day. 48 teams, 16 host cities across three countries, 104 matches over 39 days — the biggest tournament in the history of the sport. I’ll admit, I’m excited. There’s something about a genuinely global event that cuts through the noise of my usual macro-and-markets diet. But here’s the thing — as I started reading about ticket prices, hospitality packages, and host-city economics this week, I couldn’t shake a feeling of déjà vu. I have seen this pattern before. Not in soccer. In consumer spending data. It’s the K-shaped economy — and it turns out the World Cup might be its perfect microcosm.

A Quick Refresher: What Is the K-Shaped Economy?

If you’ve been following along, you know I’ve been fascinated by a series of posts from the New York Fed this spring on what they call the “K-shaped economy.” The idea is simple, even if the implications are not: since 2023, high-income households have seen their real spending grow steadily, while low-income households have seen theirs stagnate or decline — even as both groups face the same headline inflation numbers. The Fed’s researchers found that wealth gains have flowed disproportionately to high earners, while inflation has hit low earners hardest — and the result is two diverging lines on a chart that used to move together. One line goes up. One line goes… well, the other way. Hence, the “K.” I wrote about this in the context of gasoline spending a few weeks back — during the spring energy price spike, high-income households barely changed their real gas consumption (they just paid more), while low-income households cut back on driving altogether. Same shock, completely different lived experience. So when I started looking at the World Cup numbers, the K shape jumped right off the page again.

Two World Cups, One Tournament

Here’s what caught my attention: reports this week suggest that hotel bookings in host cities are running as much as 80% below expectations. Atlanta, San Francisco, Vancouver — cities that braced for a tourism tidal wave are instead seeing hotel rates down by a third. Analysts are pointing to ticket prices, inflation fears, and visa barriers as the culprits keeping ordinary fans away. And yet — at the exact same time — premium hospitality packages, luxury suites, and high-end sponsorship activations are reportedly selling just fine. The corporate boxes are full. The $2500+ “experience” tickets are moving. It’s the budget traveler, the family road-tripping to catch a group-stage match, the fan who’d normally book a $120/night hotel room near the stadium, who’s sitting this one out. One World Cup for people who can absorb a few thousand dollars of “experience” spending without blinking. A different World Cup — a smaller, quieter one — for everyone else. Sound familiar? It’s the gas pump all over again, just with jerseys instead of gas tanks. I find this particularly interesting because the World Cup is supposed to be the People’s Game. It’s the one sporting event that’s genuinely global, genuinely cross-class, in a way the Super Bowl or the Olympics never quite manage. If even the World Cup is bifurcating along income lines, that tells you something about how deep this pattern runs.

Why This Keeps Showing Up

I keep finding this same shape — in gas spending, in retail data, and now in World Cup hospitality — and I think that’s the real lesson. The K-shaped economy isn’t a one-off story about a single sector. It’s a lens. Once you have it, you start seeing it everywhere: in which restaurants have lines out the door and which are closing, in which airlines are adding premium cabins while cutting basic economy, in which neighborhoods are getting renovated and which are getting left behind. For investors, I think the practical implication is this: aggregate consumer spending data is becoming less useful on its own. The composition of that spending — who’s spending, on what, and why — is where the signal is.

A Stoic Closing Thought

Marcus Aurelius wrote that we should “waste no more time arguing about what a good person should be, and just be one.” I’m not sure soccer fixes inequality, and I’m not naive enough to think a blog post will either. But I do think there’s something worth sitting with in the fact that even our shared global moments — the events designed to bring everyone together — increasingly don’t.

Maybe the most useful thing I can do, as both a writer and an investor, is just keep naming the pattern when I see it. The K shows up in the data long before it shows up in the headlines. If you’re positioning a portfolio — or just trying to understand the world — that’s worth paying attention to.

Enjoy the tournament. I know I will — wherever I end up watching it from.
What are your thoughts? Have you noticed the K-shape showing up in places you wouldn’t expect? Let me know in the comments below.

Recommended Reading

• Tracking the K‑Shaped Economy: Who’s Driving Spending?
• Explaining the K‑Shaped Economy: What’s Behind the Divide?
• 2026 World Cup: High Costs for Host Cities

Cheers 🥂