The biggest red card of the 2026 World Cup wasn’t shown on the field.
It was handed out by Santa Clara City Hall.
While millions of fans watched FIFA reverse U.S. striker Folarin Balogun’s controversial suspension, street vendors outside the stadium got no second chance. Their offence? Trying to sell hot dogs and T-shirts to soccer fans.
Welcome to Silicon Valley – where disrupting entire industries is encouraged, unless you’re trying to disrupt concession sales.
For hot dog and T-shirt sellers, their red cards stood.
Long before the first whistle, Santa Clara’s city council expanded the no-vending zone around the stadium for the World Cup and Super Bowl LX, banning street vendors outside the stadium. It’s a significantly-expanded perimeter compared to regular 49ers games.
Their action is contrary to how we think of Silicon Valley, often celebrated globally as a symbol of entrepreneurship. Yet during one of the largest economic opportunities in the region’s recent history, the city is prohibiting many of its smallest entrepreneurs from participating.
It wasn’t always this way.
I was eight years old in January 1985 when the 49ers beat the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl 19 held at Stanford Stadium, a twenty-minute drive from my childhood home in Santa Clara.
What I remember most from the game is not Joe Montana’s MVP-winning performance or President Reagan’s virtual coin toss from the White House. My memory is the t-shirt sellers that lined every corner up El Camino Real between Santa Clara and Palo Alto. Their presence made us feel like we were part of the big game, even if we didn’t have tickets.
Santa Clara’s ordinance is in contrast with the other U.S. host cities, most of whom are working with local licensed vendors so they, too, can sell some goods with the world coming to town.
Even Seattle – a city not known for regulatory freedom – was perhaps the most encouraging host city in incorporating licensed street vendors in World Cup activities.
Santa Clara Councilmember Albert Gonzales said the quiet part out loud. Defending his vote to the San José Spotlight, he said with the ordinance, “you don’t have anybody else coming in with food trucks and taking some of your business away.”
As legendary soccer announcer Andrés Cantor would say, gooooooooal!
The Santa Clara ordinance is not about safety; it’s about government picking winners and losers.
The winner is FIFA. It demands bans on “counterfeit” merchandise sales (read items where FIFA doesn’t get a cut of sales) and corporate stadium naming (hence Levi’s Stadium being called “San Francisco Bay Area Stadium” during the Cup). Soccer’s governing body, according to the Houston Chronicle, reportedly takes in all ticket and concession revenue at World Cup venues.
The losers are the street vendors trying to provide a better life for their families by selling food outside the stadium.
Research from California and nationally has shown that the majority of street vendors are immigrant entrepreneurs, primarily Latino. Street vending is not a side hustle for them, but a primary way to climb the economic ladder.
Two of the countries playing in Santa Clara, Algeria and Turkey, are ranked among the world’s least economically free countries in the Frasier Institute’s annual survey. It’s ironic that immigrants from those countries, who came to the United States for their chance at the American Dream, now face similar economic barriers to those they left behind.
Zaileen Janmohamed, president and CEO of the Bay Area host committee, says the ordinance is about “keeping visitors safe during the tournament.” But this is a rouse – if safety was really the concern, the ordinance would be more narrowly tailored.
If a street vendor can legally and safely sell hot dogs or T-shirts during a normal 49ers game, why should that same vendor be barred during the World Cup, when consumer demand is highest? The answer is cronyism.
The Santa Clara ordinance runs contrary to recent Sacramento efforts deregulating street vending – a rare California bright spot for entrepreneurship and free markets.
Since 2018, lawmakers have enacted reforms to decriminalize sidewalk vending, prohibit cities from outright banning street vendors, and update food safety laws to help vendors obtain permits more easily. Only through a loophole in state law could Santa Clara enact its ordinance.
Silicon Valley became famous because it allowed newcomers—many of them immigrants—to challenge established players. The World Cup ordinance does the opposite: it protects a highly managed commercial environment in which large institutions control access to customers during the period of highest demand.
If Silicon Valley is confident enough to welcome the world, why isn’t it confident enough to allow more of its own entrepreneurs to compete for their business?
Tim Anaya is the Pacific Research Institute’s vice president of marketing and communications.