This Lunar New Year, Chinatown celebrations will be muddied by preparations for tourism, gentrification, and policing brought by the upcoming FIFA World Cup. For Chinatowns across the US and Canada, the 2026 World Cup is part of a long legacy of sporting events justifying the allocation of taxpayer dollars for short-lived sports infrastructure over the needs of residents, small businesses, and houseless neighbors. Due to racist city planning, Chinatowns are disproportionately burdened with sports stadiums. Coast to Coast Chinatowns Against Displacement, a network of autonomous Chinatown-based organizing groups, will harness the power of the incoming Fire Horse to defend our neighborhoods against FIFA’s corporate greed and state violence.

The History of MegaSporting Impacts on Nearby Working Class Communities of Color

Even when megasporting events like the Olympics and FIFA aren’t in town, corporate sports infrastructure still impacts daily life in Chinatown. Historically, Chinatowns emerged as enclaves that protected Chinese immigrants from racism, violence, and economic instability. However, these centrally located, urban neighborhoods experience ongoing disinvestment and are frequently targeted for redevelopment by local governments. Sport stadiums are often built in Chinatowns against the will of residents due to racist urban planning policies seeking to displace and erase low-income and working class neighbourhoods through infrastructure projects. The presence of these sports stadiums cast a long shadow on residents, community members, and small businesses. There are stadiums near or in Chinatown in Flushing, New York (the NY Mets); Winnipeg, Canada (Canada Life Centre); Seattle (Lumen Field and T-Mobile Park); Los Angeles (Dodger’s Stadium); and Vancouver, Canada (Rogers Arena & BC Place). Stadium construction in St. Louis, Missouri and Washington DC effectively destroyed the cities’ Chinatowns.

The recent, successful fight from residents and allies in Philadelphia’s Chinatown against the proposed 76ers arena is representative of a decades-long history of community struggle for self-determination across North American Chinatowns. Meanwhile these stadiums displace and divest public funds and community capacity away from the affordable and public spaces in which culturally competent and accessible Chinatown sports, such as nine-person volleyball, martial arts, and dragonboating occur. The residents and workers living in the remaining Chinatowns are forced to coexist with multibillion dollar corporations that dominate their daily lives year around. Although our small businesses were promised that these stadiums would bring customers, owners often found that Chinatowns were used as parking lots: sports fans spend their money at the stadiums instead of local businesses. Chinatowns in Vancouver, Seattle, and Los Angeles are preparing for the intensification of these daily infractions with the arrival of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and there are already reports of increased surveillance, with Seattle and Vancouver installing hundreds of new surveillance cameras. These data from these surveillance technologies have been accessed by the US federal government to track, kidnap, and disappear people. Per researcher Volker Eick, previous World Cups have led to the “modernization, enduring expansion and centralisation of CCTV systems in the hosting sports stadia, at the railway stations and in urban public transport networks”, emphasizing how these events have contributed to increased surveillance in their host cities. In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security, currently under fire for the mass kidnappings and increased ICE activity, has announced that it plans to invest $115M in counter-drone technologies, and the Trump administration has not ruled out conducting ICE raids at World Cup games.

Sportswashing across the Host Cities

As Seattle’s Protect Our Pitch 206 explains, “Mega sports events like FIFA give governments and corporations a profitable pretext to accelerate and exacerbate existing inequalities.” While our cities pour resources into hosting FIFA, very few–if any–resources are allocated to Chinatown residents.

FIFA is engaging in sportswashing, which leverages the progressive veneer of community engagement, such as donating to pro-immigrant art projects or youth soccer programs, to distance themselves from their acts of state violence. Sportswashing hides FIFA’s corruption scandals and human rights violations from public view, which soccer fans themselves denounce as deplorable. However, FIFA is not held accountable for this wrongdoing. The organization delegates decision-making authority to smaller, city based teams that claim no authority over, or accountability for, FIFA. These Local Organizing Committees are tasked to make FIFA welcome in the city by donating thousands of dollars to local efforts or arts and culture organizations without addressing the actual impacts FIFA brings. For example, Seattle LOC’s gave $50,000 to the Wing Luke Museum, and dedicated their donation to a statue commemorating the 1886 Expulsion of Chinese in the city. Meanwhile, Seattle has been increasing policing and surveillance in Chinatown-International District at the request of FIFA. Every host city will be experiencing the militarization of their local police, in addition to federal agents flooding their neighborhoods.

Come June, Seattle will be hosting 6 FIFA matches, which will bring an estimated seven hundred fifty thousand visitors, doubling the city’s population. The estimated $900 million dollars of economic impacts for King County will not be felt by residents, workers, or small business owners but rather big businesses like hotels and stadiums. The City has been bragging about these estimates as a point of pride, out of touch with the concerns of everyday people impacted by the increased strain on the city’s public services. Instead, in preparation for the events, the City of Seattle has implemented restrictive discriminatory zones and countless homeless encampment sweeps to maintain the cleanliness of downtown over the needs of Seattleites. Seattle’s inhumane “profit over people” actions echo city to city.

Residents Speak Out

In Vancouver, former CRAB Park tent city residents (who provide community outreach through the Ayx Community Bus) also fear that the games will speed up displacement, surveillance and gentrification. "I feel more threatened when the police are around," says Jessie.

Like Chinatowns across North America, the Downtown Eastside has its own history of resilience and resistance.

"FIFA is a nerve-wracking wave of gentrification for as long as it lasts," says Kyli. "But the DTES has been around for a long time, and it's such a diverse and vibrant community, with so many wins. If they try to erase that? They're erasing the history of Vancouver."

Call to Action

Across these North American Chinatowns, organizers call on the public to mobilize in support of these communities facing increased surveillance and displacement.

“There’s room for everyone in this movement,” say organizers with Protect Our Pitch 2026, “Whether you’re a sports fan or a resident in an impacted neighborhood (or both!), we invite you to carry forward, uplift, and advocate for whichever of the community demands resonate with you. FIFA marks an opportunity for all of us to raise collective consciousness around how mega sports events tie to human rights violations, city spending on corporate interests, and lack of public infrastructure and support for our most vulnerable community members. We call on our city government to put the interests of the people over profit. While there are resources for small business support through nonprofits and BIAs (business improvement associations), who’s looking out for residents and workers as neighborhoods are flooded with fans? This movement is not meant to shame sports fans, but rather encourage locals to engage in their community. Love the game, fight the impact.”

About the Coast to Coast Chinatowns Against Displacement
Coast to Coast Chinatown Against Displacement is a coalition of grassroots community organizers from Chinatowns across Canada and the United States, including Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Toronto, and Vancouver. Organizations representing FIFA host cities include Chinatown Community for Equitable Development (CCED) in Los Angeles, Chinatown Together in Vancouver, and CID Coalition in Seattle. The coalition first gathered in Philadelphia in December 2018 to share strategies on fighting the gentrification and displacement eroding Chinatown communities.

Supporting organizations
Asian American Zine Fest Seattle
Ayx Community Bus
SWAN Vancouver
Pivot Legal Society