For decades, many football traditionalists looked at American stadiums with suspicion. Too large. Too commercial. Too shaped by the NFL. Too much roof, screen, suite and spectacle. A football ground, in the old sense, was supposed to breathe with the city around it. The American stadium often feels like a city of its own.

But the 2026 World Cup has shown that scale can be its own form of atmosphere.

FIFA’s published venue capacities list Dallas Stadium at 94,000, Mexico City Stadium at 83,000, New York New Jersey Stadium at 82,500, Atlanta Stadium at 75,000, Kansas City Stadium at 73,000 and Houston Stadium at 72,000. Several of the US venues are NFL stadiums temporarily renamed under FIFA sponsorship rules.

A World Cup match in one of these stadiums does not always feel like a club football occasion. It feels like an event staged at national scale: huge screens, vast bowls, long concourses, layered hospitality, pre-match entertainment and travelling fans trying to understand a country built on distance.

Reuters, in a feature on fan experiences across the tournament, described the World Cup as producing joy, torment and lifelong memories, with supporters carrying their own rituals into North American cities. The American experience is unique and the stadium is only one part of that experience. The rest is highways, hotels, diners, tailgates, fan festivals and the strangeness of seeing global football pass through spaces usually reserved for another type of Football. Yet, this cultural clash has produced something remarkable on its own. Perhaps this was most evident in the invasion of Boston by the Tartan Army (Scottish supporters) with their now famous slogan “No Scotland, No Party” eventually leading to Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston proposing that Glasgow and Boston become sister cities, a proposal that will become enshrined next year during the annual Tartan Army celebrations in April 2027.

Unlike Europe where football stadiums are typically older and used expressly for Football. American stadiums tend to be built to be larger and malleable. The SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, where Spain beat Belgium 2-1, is perhaps the neatest example. It is not a traditional football venue, rather it is a multi-purpose facility that seats between 70 to a bit over 100 thousand, depending on the event. This is abnormal for the typical football mind but it has somehow worked out. The international audience has not missed that contrast. For many travelling supporters, the surprise has not only been the football. It has been the size of the thing around it.

That was part of why “Freddy the German” became such a viral figure during the tournament. Freddy was a German fan who went on a trip around the U.S. with his mates to follow the German team. He started enthusiastically documenting his trip over social media but his journey through the United States turned into social-media theatre. He rapidly blew up online and garnered a massive following on twitter before he deactivated his X account over harassment and backlash. Part of his affably harmless schtick was because he and his friends treated ordinary American scale as exotic: gas stations, roads, food stops, retail spaces and stadium approaches all became part of the World Cup journey.

There is a lesson in that. Football supporters often say they want authenticity, and they do. But authenticity does not always mean old brick, tight streets and low roofs. Sometimes it means a tournament absorbing the personality of the host. On that front, the American World Cup has not copied Europe or South America. It has looked like itself: big, expensive, logistical, occasionally excessive and often visually overwhelming and of course, overpriced.

That will not satisfy everyone. Some fans have complained about costs, travel distances and the corporate feel of the tournament and one would not be wrong in these assessments. A giant stadium can magnify atmosphere, but it can also strengthen the separation between game and supporter.

Still, as a spectacle, the stadiums have done what they were built to do – they have made the newly expanded World Cup look enormous.