What can a high school possibly have to do with the FIFA World Cup 2026? Maybe send young fans to the stadium. Or send junior class kids as player mascots ahead of the national anthems right? But if someone said that four private schools in the US are earning a combined total in millions by doing something that is one of the most unusual things for a school in the traditional thinking system. It would be strange, but the US is home to stranger things, isn’t it?
Four tournament heavyweights did something entirely different.
Spain (FIFA No. 2), Morocco (No. 8), Croatia (No. 11), and Switzerland (No. 19) chose elementary and high schools — two boarding schools, a private K-12 institution, and one Jewish day school — as their official World Cup base camps. From the banks of the Tennessee River to a 56-acre campus in San Diego’s Carmel Valley, these academic institutions have quietly turned their sports fields into a high-margin revenue engine for a single month’s work.
How much are the schools making by hosting FIFA World Cup teams?
San Diego Jewish Academy brings in about $250,000 annually from renting out its gym and fields. The FIFA rental fee alone will deliver more than $500,000 — more than doubling its standard annual auxiliary revenue in a single tournament. For context in Indian currency at current exchange rates, that is approximately ₹4.75 crore from a single contract. Every rupee of it goes directly back to teachers and students.
At The Pingry School in Basking Ridge, New Jersey — a campus spanning over 120 hectares that previously hosted Italy during the 1994 World Cup and has since been renovated to feature two international-standard grass pitches and a modern athletics centre — Morocco has set up base. The Miller Bugliari ’52 World Cup Field has long served as a training venue for top clubs.
Spain selected The Baylor School, a private boarding school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, nestled on the banks of the Tennessee River — chosen specifically because its seclusion and recently installed blacked-out fencing make it one of the most counter-espionage-proof training facilities in the American south. Spain’s opening match against Cape Verde takes place on June 15 in Atlanta, roughly 120 miles away — a two-hour drive.
Croatia selected Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia — just outside Washington D.C. — as its first-choice base camp after evaluating more than 60 potential sites. Episcopal is one of the few facilities in the United States featuring a premier Bermuda grass field comparable to the world’s most iconic stadiums.
The Isolation Arbitrage
Three of these four schools sit nowhere near an active World Cup stadium. Federations are willingly routing their multi-million dollar squads hundreds of extra miles between match days. The reason is consistent across all four selections: privacy that commercial hotels and public universities simply cannot offer.
The Baylor School’s training facilities are secluded, partially by trees but also by recently installed blacked-out fencing. Chattanooga offers Spain the accommodations and resources it needs in a quieter environment than a major metropolitan area. Croatia’s technical director Stipe Pletikosa said Episcopal offered the best combination of elite training conditions, comfort, and geographic accessibility relative to the team’s group-stage matches.
Swiss head coach Murat Yakin put it plainly: “We wanted a place where we could relax, recharge, train at our highest level, and fully focus on our tasks. San Diego offers exactly that environment.”
The Community Payback
FIFA mandates that every base camp team host a community engagement event. Switzerland’s squad engaged with more than 500 students from San Diego Jewish Academy — aged 3 to 16 — on their first day of training, with students joining stars like Granit Xhaka and Manuel Akanji on the pitch for mini-training drills as part of FIFA’s Be Active initiative.
Is this a way ahead for other schools in utilising real estate?
For these schools, the World Cup is not a distraction from their core business — it is an asset optimisation exercise that any finance director would recognise. A month’s vacancy on a premium grass pitch, marketed directly to FIFA’s base camp programme, delivers revenue multiples that standard facility rental calendars could never approach.
For the next few weeks, Lamine Yamal trains in Chattanooga. Luka Modrić trains in Alexandria. Granit Xhaka trains in San Diego. And four American high schools are quietly running the most efficient real estate trade of the summer.
Note: All figures in USD unless stated. INR conversion at approximately ₹95 to the dollar.