WASHINGTON (AP) — If President Donald Trump is coming to the game, bet on the visiting team.
You'll usually be in the money — at least if recent history holds.
The New York Knicks, coming off two straight wins in the finals against the San Antonio Spurs, lost at home 115-111 on Monday night with Trump, a longtime fan of the Big Apple's NBA team, in a luxury suite at Madison Square Garden. He similarly may have had a jinxing role for MLB's Washington Nationals during his first term, when the home team lost Game 5 of the World Series to the Houston Astros 7-1.
In November, the president was on hand when the NFL's Washington Commanders hosted the Detroit Lions, and the visitors romped 44-22. And he was front and center at Bethpage Black when Europe topped the U.S. golf team in last fall's Ryder Cup.
It’s a glaring irony for a president fanatical about sports but also especially obsessed with winning.
Trump frequently mentions his own election victories, even boasting of a 2020 win over Joe Biden that never happened, and touts his record of endorsing winning Republican primary candidates. His love of sports also sometimes leads him into hostile territory, including heavily Democratic Manhattan, where his very presence led to sustained booing before Game 3's tipoff.
To be fair, Trump's attendance doesn't guarantee the home team will lose.
Last September, the New York Yankees beat the visiting Detroit Tigers 9-3 as the president marked the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Trump was also there when Navy beat Army 17-16 in Baltimore last fall, when the Midshipmen were technically the home team — though Navy wasn't playing in its home stadium in Annapolis, Maryland.
He's also been to plenty of sporting events where home field advantage isn't a factor.
That was true for his attending the U.S. Open in September and the 2025 Super Bowl in New Orleans, where the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs, as well as that year's Daytona 500. Ditto for 2024's NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia and the FIFA Club World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
It also won't be an issue Sunday, when the White House's South Lawn will host a UFC show to mark Trump's 80th birthday.
The White House didn’t respond to a message Monday seeking comment on Trump’s attendance at key sporting events possibly being bad luck for the home team.
If the trend holds, however, it may not be great news for the U.S. national team in the World Cup, which opens Thursday. The Americans have never made it past the semifinal stage in the tournament's modern history anyway — and they'll have to contend this time with Trump playing an outsize role in organizing the event. He has pledged to attend the final and award the trophy to the winning team.
Some Knicks fans have faulted the president for the Game 3 defeat, even though their team still leads the series. Game 4 will also be played in New York on Wednesday, though this time Trump isn't expected to attend.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate and frequent foil for the president, playfully picked up on the theme of Trump as a jinx, reposting a past White House post on X declaring “Call it the Trump effect” alongside discussion about the Knicks' loss.
ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith — himself mentioned as a possible future presidential hopeful — suggested before Game 3 that it'd be Trump's fault if the Knicks didn't win. Afterward, he said, “What I feared would happen ended up happening.”
“The president disrupted our mojo,” said Smith, a longtime Knicks fan, before adding, “The man messed things up.”
Asked after the game about Smith potentially blaming him for a Knicks loss, Trump dismissed the commentator's political aspirations and questioned his intelligence.
“I think he’s a nice guy. But you need a certain aptitude to run for president,” Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One for his flight back to Washington early Tuesday
“You need a high IQ. I’m not sure that Stephen has that,” he said. “I don’t think he does, actually.”
Before he was a politician, Trump, a native of the New York City borough of Queens, frequently attended Knicks games, sometimes sitting courtside. His return to the Garden nonetheless drew long and loud boos when his face was shown on the jumbotron during the national anthem — and that was before the Knicks lost.
In fact, he's been roundly booed repeatedly, though it has more to do with his politics than any role he might have in jinxing the home team. Trump drew boos at the Nationals' World Series game and during the Commanders game and the U.S. Open. At some events he's cheered and the crowd reaction can also be mixed — though Trump is likely to simply claim a more friendly reception than he actually gets.
After the Knicks game, Trump tried to suggest that the boos were “I think, mostly cheers.” The White House similarly attempted to spin the incident into a political show of strength, posting a photo of Trump at the game with the caption “King of New York.”
Offering a different assessment was New York's Daily News tabloid. It featured a cartoon of an exaggeratedly rotund Trump wearing a No. 38 Knicks jersey — with a bubble emerging from his mouth saying “approval rating.”
President Donald Trump attends an NBA Finals playoff basketball game between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs at Madison Square Garden in New York, Monday, June 8, 2026, with Kai Trump. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
A New York Knicks fan cheers at a watch party during Game 3 of the NBA Finals basketball series between the Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, Monday, June 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
Adding more turmoil to a chaotic World Cup buildup for Iran, the national soccer federation claimed Tuesday that FIFA revoked the ticket allocation for fans at the team’s three group-stage games in the United States.
Each federation for the 48 teams taking part is entitled to receive and distribute 8% of stadium capacity for each of its games at the World Cup, adding up to several thousands of tickets per game.
Those allocations typically went on sale to each team's most loyal fans soon after the tournament draw in December, when Iranians had already for five months been subject to a travel ban by the U.S. government.
Now, just days before Iran opens its World Cup — on June 15 at the 70,000-seat Los Angeles Rams’ stadium in Inglewood against New Zealand — the federation claimed in a statement reported by semi-official state media it was now unable to provide any tickets to its supporters.
The claim adds to the tensions between Iranian soccer, FIFA and tournament co-host the U.S., which began military attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.
FIFA has total authority over ticketing operations at the World Cup, yet the Iranian soccer body suggested “the United States has now taken steps to obstruct the presence of Iranian supporters at the stadiums.”
“This incident raises serious questions about the influence of non-sporting and political considerations on the organization of the world’s biggest football event,” the Iranian soccer federation said.
FIFA said in a statement Tuesday it is "working closely with the IR Iran Football Federation to identify compliant solutions that maximize opportunities for Iranian supporters to attend matches.”
FIFA President Gianni Infantino and its CEO-like secretary general Mattias Grafström each promised logistical support in face-to-face meetings with Iranian soccer officials in Turkey in recent weeks.
Most of Iran's 26-man squad has not had a competitive game since February because they play for clubs in the domestic league that was shut down by the war.
They are now based in the Mexican border city of Tijuana instead of a pre-war plan to train in Tucson, Arizona. It is the team's seventh appearance at a men's World Cup.
Some federation officials also have been denied visas to enter the U.S., where Iran also plays Belgium in Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles, on June 21 and then Egypt in Seattle on June 26.
Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House FIFA task force, said Tuesday that the Iranian team would be able to enter the U.S. the day before their match and emphasized that Tijuana was a short flight to Los Angeles. He confirmed that some Iranian officials were “not coming in” and while he declined to go into specifics, Giuliani added that “as you can imagine, there are some people that claim that they are coaches that may not be coaches.”
“The president has been clear on this one ... that he wants to make sure that they have every opportunity to compete on a level playing field here, while also making sure that people that are directly working, let’s say, with the IRGC have no ability to access the United States of America,” Giuliani said, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Fans wanting to come to the U.S. to follow the team were likely to face issues obtaining visas issues and making payments while financial sanctions are in force.
“However, in an unexpected move, the allocation granted to Iran’s football federation has been withdrawn, and under the current circumstances the federation is unable to offer even a single ticket to national team supporters,” the federation said.
It was unclear Tuesday how many tickets in Iran’s allocation were sold, if they live in their home country or are part of its diaspora including about 1 million people in the U.S.
If Iranian tickets are revoked, FIFA would have just days to sell about 5,600 tickets for the Iran-New Zealand game on Monday, though Los Angeles has the largest Iranian community in the U.S.
The FIFA sales site on Tuesday showed rows of field-level seats available at $450 each though in the dozens rather than hundreds.
Still, Infantino stated in 2017 — when U.S. soccer officials were preparing a co-hosting bid with Canada and Mexico they won the following year — that fans must have access to the tournament.
“It’s obvious when it comes to FIFA competitions as well (that) any team, including the supporters and the officials of that team, who would qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup,” Infantino said nine years ago. “That is obvious.”
U.S. policy toward World Cup visitors is becoming a strong theme before the games begin on Thursday.
A FIFA-appointed match referee from Somalia was denied entry to the U.S. in Miami at the weekend and on Monday he was cut from the 104-game tournament that starts in Mexico City.
An Iraq player was detained for several hours on arriving in Chicago and a photographer traveling with the delegation was denied entry.
“The disruption is such that one has to ask who is running the World Cup. Is it FIFA or is it the U.S. government with its racially charged immigration policies?” Piara Powar, the head of FIFA's anti-discrimination monitoring partner, said on Tuesday in a statement.
“Before a ball has been kicked,” said Powar, executive director of the Fare Network, “the sense that this World Cup is anything but the celebration of global humanity a World Cup should be is beginning to take over.”
Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report from Washington. AP World Cup: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup
Iran's Ehsan Hajisafi arrives with his teammates for the World Cup soccer tournament in Tijuana, Mexico, Sunday, June 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Fans for team Iran wave as players arrive for the World Cup soccer tournament in Tijuana, Mexico, Sunday, June 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
