Cancel Your US World Cup and Olympics Tickets Now

The United States is about to host two of the world’s biggest sporting events: the 2026 Men’s World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Normally, that would be a celebration. Sport can be an expresssion of our shared humanity, a reason to travel, connect, and feel part of something bigger than politics.

But we’re not in normal times. Under the Trump Regime, the United States is behaving in ways that make the world less safe, and mega-events like the World Cup and Olympics are not politically neutral. They’re legitimacy engines. They’re soft power, branding, and money.

When a superpower becomes belligerent, breaks global rules and threatens its friends as well as its foes, flooding it with tourism dollars and global prestige isn’t “keeping sport separate from politics”. It’s rewarding bad behaviour.

If you have tickets or travel plans for World Cup matches in the US, or for the LA Olympics, you should seriously consider cancelling them.

Not because sport is unimportant. But because sport is powerful.

Berlin 1936: the original sportswash

The 1936 Berlin Olympics are the clearest lesson in how sport can be weaponised. Nazi Germany used the Games to project modernity and respectability while masking persecution and militarism. The world debated boycotting. In the end, most nations came. The regime got its spectacle and its normalisation.

I’m not saying the US in 2026 is Nazi Germany. Well, not yet! But it’s getting closer and the mechanism and thematics are similar: mega-events create an illusion of normality. They give leaders a glossy shield. They invite the world to look away.

Boycotts are never clean. They can feel unfair to athletes. They can be dismissed as symbolism. But symbolism matters, because symbols are what mega-events trade in.

Sporting boycotts have been used before: against apartheid South Africa, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and through diplomatic boycotts when states wanted to signal that human rights abuses and aggression shouldn’t be quietly normalised. Boycotts don’t “solve” geopolitics, but they mark a line. They deny legitimacy. They force an argument into the open.

Why the US, and why now?

Because this isn’t about abstract discomfort. It’s about patterns of behaviour that are accelerating.

The world has watched the US attack Venezuela and seize its president, with the UN warning of a dangerous precedent.  Trump is now threatening to take Greenland from Denmark, which is a surreal moment in modern history.

Even if you think that some of Trump’s targets like President Maduro “deserve it”, that is exactly why rules matter. The world has rules for dealing with bad regimes, and those rules don’t include bombing, kidnapping leaders, and helping yourself to another country’s resources. Once a superpower normalises that behaviour, others copy it.

Even if you don’t care about symbolism, there’s also the practical reality: in addition to having to hand over your social media history and personal information for the visa, travel to the US now carries heightened risks that aren’t just hypothetical.

First, gun violence is a real and persistent risk. DFAT has explicitly noted this and it points travellers to active shooter guidance. Second, the Trump Regime’s border and immigration enforcement has become violent and unpredictable for visitors. The line between “immigration enforcement” and lethal force is regularly in the news. This week, an ICE agent shot and killed a US citizen, Renee Nicole Good, during an operation in Minneapolis. Trump officials defended it, but local leaders and reporting have strongly disputed the self-defence narrative and called for transparency and accountability.

If you’re travelling for sport, you should not have to factor in “detained, deported, or caught in a surge of militarised enforcement” as part of the experience.

What cancelling your ticket says

Cancelling isn’t “anti-American”. It is pro-law. It says sovereignty and respect for other countries and people isn’t a joke, borders aren’t negotiable, and international rules apply to powerful countries too. You do not get to bully the world and then throw a party.

So cancel your tickets. Move your plans elsewhere and tell sponsors you do not buy the fantasy that sport is neutral when power is acting without restraint.

If we keep turning up, cheering, and spending as if everything is normal, we are not just spectators. We become enablers.