A ranking of the top 50 countries most gripped by World Cup fever is today published by flight booking analyst ForwardKeys.
The ranking is based on the uplift in visitor arrivals to Russia from June 4 to July 15 in Russia, when World Cup ticket holders do not need a visa to enter the country.
The nation topping of the list with the greatest number of additional visitors is the US despite its team not qualifying for the tournament.
The US is followed by Brazil, Spain, Argentina, South Korea, Mexico, China, the UK, Germany and Egypt.
Interest in football has grown strongly in the US since it was the host nation for the 1994 World Cup.
Consequently, there will be nearly twice as many Americans in Russia during the World Cup as Brazilians.
ForwardKeys, which predicts future travel patterns by analysing 17 million booking transactions a day, believes that the reasons for the high placing of the US also include the fact that it is the largest outbound travel market in the world and that it has a sizeable Latin segment in its population.
One notable absentee from the top 50 list is Belgium despite the country qualifying for the World Cup.
ForwardKeys cited the collapse of VLM Airlines last autumn as a reason as the carrier had a sizeable share of flights between Brussels and Russia so many Belgians are likely flying from neighbouring countries instead.
The comany also looked at an alternative method of ranking countries, benchmarking them against the number of visitors that came to Russia during the equivalent period last year.
On that method of analysis, Paraguay tops the list with more than 52 times as many Paraguayans visiting Russia for the World Cup as visited in 2017. It is followed by Peru, which last qualified for the finals in 1982, Panama, Nigeria, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Colombia and Morocco.
ForwardKeys chief executive Olivier Jager said: “It is interesting to compare the different methods for assessing World Cup fever.
“On one approach, the list is headed by small countries, whose populations rarely visit Russia, so the uplift multiples of the top-ranked countries are enormous.
“However, the alternative approach tells you where the largest numbers of fans are coming from.
“Nevertheless, what I find fascinating is that whichever method one uses to assess World Cup fever, the top country is one that has not qualified for the finals.
“If anything, that illustrates the global appeal of football. My observation is that only four countries make the top 15 on both methods, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico and Peru so perhaps we should say they are the ones most gripped by World Cup Fever.”