How the 2026 World Cup became the great rip-off

When the United States hosted the 1994 World Cup, Fifa refused to hike up the prices of tickets because they were worried about upsetting supporters. In 2026, the governing body’s strategy has flipped (The Independent/Getty/iStock)

So much for the supposedly universal US “culture” of being willing to pay high prices for any major “entertainment event”, that Fifa apparently had to abide by.

Such arguments play into another schism, which points to how this World Cup may drastically influence football’s future. That’s the philosophical tension between the idea of football as a cultural good - most visible in the European model of sport and UK football governance bill - and US consumerism where it’s just another commodity.

Fifa, officially a non-profit charity notionally safeguarding the game, have overwhelmingly come down on one side.

The ticket pricing - headlined by some final tickets listed on Fifa’s resale site for over $1m - is all the worse because of the awareness that everything else is going to cost so much. Even qualified teams are still concerned they could lose money due to expenses.

Fifa couldn’t have but been aware of this yet have loaded cost up anyway.

And while this might normally have been accepted as the price of a World Cup in an expensive country, many extra costs are direct consequences of Fifa deals.

A line by one insider speaks volumes. “It’s a lesson in how to suck the joy out of it.”

Welcome to the great World Cup rip-off.

Tickets frame everything about this World Cup’s expense, but how did Fifa actually come to this model… and why?

It is a huge departure from every previous tournament, with so many jaw-dropping numbers.

For the eventual finalists, most fans will pay a minimum of £5,200 for tickets alone. The initial controversy about such figures may now lead to the absurdity of family members sitting beside each other but paying thousands of pounds more due to one being fortunate enough to qualify for the token number of $60 Category 4 tickets created after that outcry.

“And we still don’t know where final seated categories will be,” says the FSA’s Thomas Concannon, amid further criticism for how some tickets have had their positions moved. Football Supporters Europe quip that it’s “dynamic categorisation”.

The 2026 World Cup bid document said tickets to the final would cost a maximum of $1,550 (AFP via Getty Images)

Some of those cheaper tickets for England-Croatia have still appeared on Fifa’s official resale site for $2,300.

The issue of this “secondary market” - and how “touting” is legal in the US - has admittedly created a unique challenge for this World Cup, but some of the responses are still baffling.

As well as cashing in on huge potential mark-ups, Fifa takes a 15 per cent “resale facilitation fee” and another 15 per cent from the seller.

The governing body’s persistent line is that all revenue is ultimately redistributed around the game, primarily through the Fifa Forward programme.

Even if that were singularly true, and Fifa didn’t also have a duty to make the game accessible, one source has an obvious response.

“Let’s see some transparency”; show where the money actually goes.

A greater frustration is that Fifa, who are understood to have reserves of over $2.5bn, were going to make huge money anyway. Tickets were calculated at less than 50 per cent of total revenue, which was estimated to be a record $11bn - $4bn more than Qatar - from the original prices promised in the bid book back in 2018.

“You could easily chop $5bn off and everyone, including Fifa, benefits,” says Moore, now the founding owner of US club Santa Barbara Sky in California.

Weighing over all of this, however, is that Fifa’s redistribution model has also served as a long-criticised vote-returning mechanism. Infantino spreads the money around, and grateful associations elect him back in. And more money was the core part of his manifesto back in 2016. The last few weeks have already brought calls for the president’s re-election from Conmebol and CAF, despite questions over term limits.

A similar lack of transparency surrounds how ticket pricing was decided upon. Some of the most senior Fifa figures have no clue. They maintain they were simply presented with plans from the president’s office, which is how every major decision now works.

Gianni Infantino will run for re-election next year, aiming for another four-year term having promised record revenues (Getty Images)

Sources with knowledge of the dynamics around Infantino say he is primarily surrounded by US-based advisers working “to fully optimise revenue using all tools available”.

There appears to be minimal interrogation of the actual merit of this.

That alone marks another significant departure for Fifa, especially from the last World Cup in the US.

Before 1994, tournament architect Alan Rothenberg had multiple ideas about tickets, that he details in ‘The Big Bounce’.

Rothenberg wanted “a really high-priced ticket” due to the associated prestige, as well as having every seat at the final priced at $1,000. In some echoes to now, too, he argued that “the street value would be at least that” so touts shouldn’t get the benefit.

“Fifa said no.”

Why?

“Overly concerned about average fans’ reaction.”

The difference to now is galling. And this was Joao Havelange’s Fifa, notorious for creating a model of governance corruption that the modern Fifa now crow as having left behind.

“The simple question,” Moore ponders, “is who this World Cup is supposed to be for.”

“These are once-in-lifetime chances for fans,” Concannon adds.

Fifa barely appear to have even acknowledged that, other than to consider what price can be put on it.

The US’s “secondary market” might still have put an even greater price on it, of course, but it’s like Fifa didn’t even want to consider obvious workarounds. They could have apportioned more to qualified associations to distribute according to loyalty schemes, in the way fan culture generally works.

Rather than appreciating a ticket as something with that cultural value, though, Fifa has instead repositioned them as an appreciable asset.

Fifa’s strategy for World Cup tickets has been described as a ‘lesson in how to suck the joy’ from football (Getty Images)

“It’s like marking up tickets for big concerts to sell,” Moore says. “But that’s not soccer.”

One justification has been that the dynamic pricing model used for some categories will allow supporters cheap tickets closer to the game, but that doesn’t help a fan who decided not to travel from Bogota or Berlin.

A further curiosity has been the contribution of another strand of “fanatic”. Any report on prices is met with bullish defences of “the market” on social media, with even USA 94’s Alexi Lalas contributing.

Academics put this down to how hardwired a capitalist/consumerist ideology is - what Michael Sandel describes as the “marketisation” and “skyboxification” of everything in American life.

“Even professional sport in America first developed as an entertainment business product,” explains Sean Hamil, an academic on sports governance at Birkbeck.

Jan Zglinski of the London School of Economics adds how “sport is primarily there to generate money”.

“In Europe, sport is thought of as a public good, intended to foster social cohesion.”

In other words, the European model of sport, as recognised in EU law.

Fifa essentially grew out of this thinking, which makes this shift all the more questionable.

The MetLife stadium in New Jersey will host the 2026 World Cup final but many fans of the finalists will simply be priced out (Getty Images)

For all Infantino’s talk of having to adapt to US culture, Fifa didn’t do that for any recent World Cup. Sources say that Qatar, despite all other justified criticisms, actually resisted Fifa’s attempts to apply similar pricing in 2022.

They obviously didn’t do it for South Africa, or else more locals might have been able to actually attend.

But it is also a matter of law.

Fifa is legally registered as a not-for-profit charity in Switzerland.

“None of its statutes say to maximise profit for the benefit of shareholders,” Hamil says. “They’re to promote football.

“The main problem is that it is not behaving like a not-for-profit.”

It has also fed into a host of other problems for supporters.

The ticket prices are all the more egregious because of Fifa’s apparent lack of concern at how costly a US World Cup is. Even service charges are frequently mandatory at 30 per cent, and that is one of the minor expenses. Hotels have of course been hiked up, although that amid the irony that the huge overall cost has dampened demand so prices have already dropped by 18 per cent. How couldn’t they when just getting there is worse, especially with the refusal to properly cluster games?

England, as one example, have their group games as far apart as Dallas and Boston.

Many internal flights are almost as expensive as transatlantic journeys. And for one of the rare journeys where a train is possible, like New York-Philadelphia day trips, the cost is over $300.

There’s then the headline issue of local transport. Getting to Foxboro’s Gillette Stadium from Boston will cost $80 on a train, or $95 on a bus, with a round-trip ticket from New York Pennsylvania Station to Metlife up from $13 to $105 - and the latter only after sponsorship money brought the price back down from $150.

It was the latter mark-up that Fifa’s chief operating officer for this World Cup, Heimo Schirgi, said would “have a chilling effect”.

That must be one of the most brazen ever comments in sports administration. You only have to look at any revenue stream Fifa has control over, for one.

More pertinently, such prices are a direct consequence of an astonishing deal they have struck with the host cities.

Fifa takes almost all the revenue, right up to the parking money. The cities meanwhile pick up almost all of the costs, from security to additional infrastructure.

This is the price for the privilege of hosting: a collective hole of at least $250m.

The Independent has been told Fifa did realise that US cities didn’t have access to the same funds as previous hosts, but didn’t actually adapt. They instead devised the sop of the “city supporter programme” - individual city sponsorship deals.

The Independent reported that the 11 US World Cup host cities are facing a shortfall in what is described as ‘the worst deal in Fifa World Cup history’ (Getty Images for Coca-Cola)

A problem, as reported by The Independent, is that none of those deals could cut across Fifa’s own partnerships. Huge cities were consequently left looking to local businesses.

Fifa’s other line is that the World Cup will bring tourism, but most of their decisions have put people off. Involved sources say all current indications are that travel from abroad is going to be “weak”.

The train hike-ups, meanwhile, are described by insiders as “100 per cent a consequence of this deal”.

Fifa have responded stridently to any suggestion they should pick up the cost, saying they are “not aware of any other major event previously held at NYNJ Stadium… where organisers were required to pay for fan transportation”.

But tournaments have routinely ensured ticket holders do not have to pay, mostly through deals with governments - including for Fifa’s own 2006 World Cup in Germany.

The agreements for this World Cup were changed so a previous requirement for free transport instead read “at cost”. The fans now pick up a greater cost.

Despite that, Fifa have shown no inclination to follow what Uefa did at Euro 2024 in Germany, and part-subsidise travel.

Veteran officials feel this also stems from another first for a World Cup. Fifa did away with Local Organising Committees, to take complete control.

“Nobody is there to tell them the local nuances,” one source says.

Much has similarly been made of how US Soccer have been excluded, given they would have offered views more attuned to long-term legacy.

As it is, Fifa are dropping in, occupying every space right up to the car parks and pushing everything out along with the prices, to then make off with the revenue.

While Fifa have evidently changed, so has Infantino. Old Uefa colleagues say he used to be “classic European model of sport guy”.

The Independent has written extensively about how the very position of Fifa president changes its incumbents but Infantino’s own interpretation has taken that further. His will for Fifa to be the game’s major player, rather than a regulator, has transformed outlooks.

It’s why his Club World Cup might be hugely influential. Since 2018, and initial negotiations to expand the competition with Softbank, Infantino has been in regular dialogue with the billionaire ownership class that run clubs.

They have a lot of their own ideas about ticket prices - and many actively want to “skybox” football.

‘Who is this World Cup supposed to be for?’: Under Gianni Infantino, Fifa’s approach has leaned towards World Cup to the executive class (Getty Images)

This is who Infantino is listening to. It makes his own word at the recent Fifa Congress all the more conspicuous, as he enthused about how the US’s commercialisation of sport is “reaching different levels”.

“We can go to 500 billion global football GDP, half a trillion.”

Many sources add that the way he has used football to launch himself into a geopolitical class, flying on Qatari private jets, has made him “completely detached”.

Few CEOs of non-profits are on his salary, after all.

As is always the case with such tensions, it may involve the irony of harming the “product”.

Aside from the indications that fewer fans will travel, Concannon points to how the cheapest Category 4 tickets are not pitch-side - another first.

“It means the hardcore fans are up in higher tiers, so you’re not going to have the same spectacle.”

If they go. Argentina have been the great fan story of the last three World Cups, and there are already multiple stories of how they won’t travel in anything like the same numbers. The stadiums won’t have as many people who deeply care about the teams.

As one executive puts it, “the true World Cup atmosphere will die because people literally cannot afford it”.

Fans are the source of so much colour and noise during a World Cup, the representation of a global game enjoyed by the masses (Getty Images)

Moore laments the likely contrast to the festival of Germany 2006. “It’s a completely different business model and a completely different set of objectives.”

And they may yet have a profound impact on football.

Fifa, notionally the ultimate safeguard, have instead led the way on commercial pursuits that many of the most corrosive influences have been striving to introduce for years. Infantino has opened the door.

Moore describes it as “the early stage of something quite profound”.

“It’s the World Cup shifting from mass-access global football toward a high-value limited-access mega event.”

Sporta’s Andrew Smith, who works on the financialisation of sport, believes Fifa have not properly considered long-term effects.

“We’ve seen this in other sports. If you price out those actually passionate about it, they lose interest in that pinnacle. There’s a fracturing. The people who create the value in the first place are turned off and the value is gradually lessened.

“The World Cup becomes two-tier. That’s very dangerous for football. It doesn’t have the guardrails for this.”

Fifa, of course, are supposed to be that guardrail.

Instead, everything seems to be going one way.

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