Can You Write Off the FIFA World Cup on Your Business Taxes? Here's How to Do It Right

The FIFA World Cup 2026 is happening right now at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, and there isn't a business owner in the South Bay who hasn't had some version of this thought: can I write any of this off?

The honest answer is: probably more than you think — but not in the way most people assume. The game ticket itself almost certainly isn't deductible. But the flight to San Jose, the hotel near Levi's Stadium, and the dinners with the people who flew in to meet with you? Those could absolutely be deductible. The key is structure. The IRS doesn't care whether you enjoy yourself on a business trip. It cares whether the primary purpose of the trip is legitimate business — and whether you can prove it.

Here's how small business owners in Milpitas, San Jose, Fremont, and Santa Clara can do this correctly.

The Primary Purpose Test: When Travel Is Deductible

Under IRS rules, domestic business travel expenses — transportation, lodging, meals — are deductible when the trip is primarily for business. "Primarily" means that the business purpose is the main reason for the trip, and business activities take up more of your time than personal activities.

Here's where this gets useful: the IRS does not require that a trip be exclusively for business. If you travel to San Jose for two days of legitimate business meetings and happen to attend a World Cup match at Levi's Stadium in the evening, your transportation costs and hotel for the business days are still fully deductible. You just don't get to deduct the ticket to the game — that's the personal portion.

The structure that works: schedule your real business activity first. Don't fly to Santa Clara for the FIFA World Cup and then look for a reason to call it a business trip on the way home. Build a genuine business agenda — meetings, planning sessions, a board review — and let the World Cup be what it is: a personal bonus of being in the right place at the right time.

The Board Meeting Strategy: Making It Legitimate

One of the most practical and underused tools for small business owners is the formal board meeting. Even a small business — even a one-person LLC or S-Corp — can have a board of directors or an advisory committee. Bringing that group together for a legitimate business meeting in the San Jose area during the World Cup creates a deductible business purpose for every board member's travel.

Here's how it works in practice. Your business has three or four people in an official advisory or board capacity — more on who those people can be in a moment. Two of them are in different cities: one in Phoenix, one in Dallas. You schedule a two-day board meeting in San Jose to review the year's financial performance, discuss strategic direction for the next 12 months, and approve any major decisions that require board sign-off. They fly in. You hold the meetings. And because the World Cup happens to be running at Levi's Stadium that week, everyone attends a match on the evening after Day 1.

The flights from Phoenix and Dallas to San Jose: deductible as business travel for those board members (and potentially reimbursable by the company, which then deducts the reimbursement). The hotel for the business nights: deductible. The business dinners: 50% deductible. The World Cup tickets: not deductible — those come out of personal funds. But you've just made a World Cup weekend substantially more tax-efficient without crossing any lines.

What Makes a Board Meeting Legitimate

The IRS has seen every variation of this strategy, so the documentation is what separates a real board meeting from a disguised vacation. The meeting must actually happen, and you must be able to prove it. That means:

• Meeting minutes: Written notes of who attended, their role in the business, what was discussed, and what was decided or approved. These don't need to be lengthy — but they need to exist, be signed, and be dated. Send a copy to your accountant immediately after the meeting so it becomes part of your business records.
• Agenda: A written agenda prepared in advance establishes that the meeting was planned and substantive, not retrofitted after the fact.
• Substantive content: The meeting must address real business matters — financial review, strategy, operational decisions, compliance, hiring, contracts. "We all agreed the business is going well" is not a board meeting. A documented review of the year's P&L and a discussion of Q3 goals is.
• Attendance record: Names, titles or roles, and signatures of all attendees.

Building Your Advisory Board on a Small Budget

You don't need a large company or deep pockets to have a legitimate board or advisory committee. Small businesses — including sole proprietors and single-member LLCs — can establish advisory boards whose members serve without compensation simply because they want to support the business.

Family members are a perfectly legitimate choice. A spouse who understands the business, a sibling with relevant industry experience, a parent with financial or management background — these people can serve as genuine advisors who provide real input and accountability. Their lack of compensation doesn't make their role illegitimate; unpaid advisory and board positions are common across businesses of every size.

What matters is that the role is documented in your company records. For an LLC, an operating agreement amendment or a resolution of the managing member can formally create an advisory committee and name its members. For an S-Corp or C-Corp, directors are named in corporate minutes and recorded with the state if required. This is a one-time setup that your accountant or a business attorney can help you formalize properly.

Once the structure is in place, the meetings and their minutes are what make travel deductible. A well-documented quarterly board meeting — even one that happens to take place during a globally significant sporting event — is a legitimate business activity.

What You Can Deduct With Proper Planning

If you structure the trip correctly — legitimate business purpose, documented meetings, business days outnumbering personal days — here's what becomes deductible:

• Airfare: The full cost of transportation to and from your destination is deductible when the primary purpose of the trip is business. If a board member flies from Chicago to San Jose for your meeting and also attends a match, the roundtrip airfare is still a deductible business travel expense for the company if it reimburses the cost.
• Hotel — business nights only: Lodging is deductible for nights that are part of your business activity. If you hold meetings Monday and Tuesday and stay through Wednesday for a match, Monday and Tuesday nights are deductible. Wednesday night is personal.
• Business meals — 50%: Meals with board members or business associates where business is discussed are 50% deductible. You need to document: the date, the restaurant, who attended, their business relationship to you, and the business topic discussed. A dinner after a board meeting day qualifies. Keep the receipt.
• Transportation at the destination: Rental cars, rideshares, and taxis between your hotel and meeting locations are deductible for business days. Getting a rideshare to Levi's Stadium is personal.

What You Cannot Deduct (Even With Good Planning)

Be clear-eyed about what doesn't work. The IRS scrutinizes travel deductions, and documentation that holds up is better than an aggressive position that gets reversed in audit.

Box Seats and Corporate Suites: What the IRS Allows

If you're reading this section, you're probably managing a business large enough to consider renting a corporate suite at Levi's Stadium for a World Cup match. Here's the current tax picture.

Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018, entertainment expenses — including luxury box seats and corporate suites — are no longer deductible. Prior to 2018, businesses could deduct a portion of skybox costs (capped at the face value of non-luxury seats times the number of seats). That rule is gone. The suite rental itself creates no tax deduction under current law.

However, there is one surviving carve-out that applies specifically to food and beverages. Under IRS Notice 2018-76, if food and beverages at an entertainment event are separately purchased or separately stated on the invoice from the entertainment cost, that food and beverage expense can still qualify as a 50% deductible business meal — provided it meets all the standard business meal requirements: a genuine business relationship between the parties, a business purpose for the meal, and proper documentation of who was there and what was discussed.

In practice, this means: if your corporate suite invoice breaks out the catering cost separately from the suite rental fee, and you hold a business discussion with clients during the event, the catering line may qualify for 50% deductibility. The suite rental itself does not. Ask your venue contact to separate food and beverage costs on the invoice before the event — after the fact it's much harder to establish.

The honest reality check: if your business is large enough to be renting a corporate suite at Levi's Stadium for FIFA World Cup 2026, you already have a tax advisor who knows these rules. If you're a small business owner in Milpitas or San Jose trying to evaluate whether a game-day suite makes financial sense, the tax math almost certainly doesn't help you justify it. The board meeting strategy discussed above is a far more practical path for the rest of us.

The Documentation That Protects Your Deductions

Whatever you deduct, the protection comes from documentation created at the time — not reconstructed later. Build these habits before the trip, not after:

• Prepare and distribute a written meeting agenda before the meeting
• Take notes during the meeting and write them up as formal minutes the same day
• Have all attendees sign the minutes; send a copy to your accountant
• Keep all receipts — flights, hotel, meals — and write the business purpose and attendees on the back of each receipt (or in your accounting software) while they're fresh
• For business meals, note the date, restaurant, who attended, their business relationship, and what you discussed
• Keep the game ticket receipts too — not to deduct them, but to establish the timeline if you ever need to demonstrate which expenses were business and which were personal

A shoebox of receipts and no minutes is not deductible. A documented board meeting with timestamped minutes, a signed agenda, and annotated receipts is defensible. The difference isn't what you did — it's whether you can prove it.

Also see our companion posts: Tax Tips for South Bay Businesses During the 2026 World Cup and FIFA Watch Party Payroll Guide for Bay Area Venues.