Ticket prices for the 2026 World Cup are reportedly costing several hundred dollars, with some reaching thousands.
FIFA plans to use ‘dynamic pricing,’ which could increase ticket costs further based on demand.
The high cost of attending may prevent many families and potential new fans from experiencing the tournament in person.
How foolish to think FIFA president Gianni Infantino is talking about the game when he raves about the growth next year’s World Cup will bring.
Given the outrageous ticket prices, he’s clearly referring to FIFA’s ballooning bank account.
Prices for tickets to the tournament in Canada, Mexico and the United States were finally revealed last week during the Visa presale window and, according to The Athletic, most cost several hundreds of dollars. Tickets for the U.S. men’s national team opener in Los Angeles start at $560 for one of the few nose-bleed seats available, while the best seats will set you back $2,735. Want to go to the Final at MetLife Stadium? It’s going to cost you big, with tickets ranging from $2,030 up to $6,370.
There are some $60 seats, but they are only for group-stage games and The Athletic reported they are “extremely scarce” and often located in the uppermost corners of the stadium.
Add in airfare and hotels for those traveling, or parking for those who are local, and the cost of going to one World Cup game, let alone several, is going to be more than the GDP of some countries.
Infantino and his FIFA brethren are like so many of the elites these days: tone deaf to the economic reality of those who aren’t part of their wine and cheese set. Or don’t have Qatari and Saudi sugar daddies.
Say you want to take a family of four to see the USMNT play in the World Cup. The cheapest seats, for the second group-stage game in Seattle, are $90 each, according to The Athletic. Infantino can probably scrounge up the $360 just by pulling up the cushions of the couches and seats in his private jet, but for a working-class family — hell, for a middle-class family — that is prohibitively expensive.
And it could get worse! There will be several windows for the general public to purchase tickets, and FIFA plans to use ‘dynamic pricing’ as it did for the Club World Cup, scaling prices by demand for the game. So if there’s a rush on tickets for USMNT games (duh), expect that get-in price to rise.
2026 World Cup a missed opportunity to grow soccer in US
Explain to me like I’m 5 how this World Cup is going to attract a new generation of fans and expand the reach of the game in the United States when only the wealthiest people can experience it in person.
And don’t say by watching on television. Americans have been able to watch the major European leagues, Champions League, continental championships in Europe and South America, and the World Cup for a good decade now and that hasn’t prompted the kind of growth Infantino envisions next year’s tournament creating.
“You have a good team, you have good players, you have a great coach as well — Mauricio Pochettino, who’s fantastic — and these players they play now for the best teams in the world or in Europe, if you want, and the world can see that,” Infantino said in April during an appearance on FOX’s “The Herd.”
“Combine this with the fact that a World Cup is going to be played at home, well, that’s a pretty explosive combination, isn’t it?’
It could have been. But greed won out.
1999 World Cup inspired fans, players
Imagine grade school-aged kids getting to see Christian Pulisic play in person. Or, better yet, Kylian Mbappé or Lamine Yamal. They’d see how captivating the game is at the feet of the best players in the world and be mesmerized by the carnival-like atmosphere in the stadium. That’s how you entice kids to start playing soccer or stick with it beyond Lil’ Kickers. That’s how you create lifelong fans.
How do we know this? Because of all the players on the U.S. women’s national team that won the World Cup in 2015 who recalled going to games during the 1999 tournament in the United States and being inspired by the USWNT.
“I was still a little bit young, but I definitely thought, ‘I would love this. This would be really cool to get to do,’” former USWNT goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher, who went to the 1999 tournament with her sister and their club teammates, told USA TODAY Sports in 2023.
“It was the first time that it was a bigger thought than just doing it as a kid — that you could participate and do something like that when you grew up.”
This World Cup could have had a similar impact. Alas, Infantino and FIFA only see it as a cash cow to be bled dry. First it was super-sizing the tournament, going from 32 teams to 48 in 2026. Now it’s prices jacked up to Super Bowl heights.
FIFA did something similar at the Club World Cup, only to be forced to lower ticket prices because of low demand. Fitting, really, because Infantino and FIFA do nothing but continue to cheapen the game they are supposed to be championing.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.