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The 2026 World Cup is shaping up to be the most profitable tournament for FIFA and the most expensive for fans in history. Business Insider reporter Pete Syme investigated why ticket prices are so high and compiled five charts that illustrate just how out of reach many of the tournament’s games are for average fans. What Syme discovered is that ticket prices are higher than ever because FIFA has adopted ticketing practices common in North America like dynamic pricing and running its own secondary resale market, where prices skyrocket further. But it doesn’t stop there. The additional costs fans have to pay are also high, including flights, hotels, and transit to game stadiums. Some American cities are jacking up transit prices on game days. When it’s all said and done, FIFA stands to make $13 billion during the 2026 World Cup cycle.
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00:00This chart shows the average cost of category one tickets for all the World Cup final matches
00:05since 1998. To see the average price for 2026, you have to zoom out and zoom out even more.
00:15People are pretty frustrated, primarily with FIFA, about just how expensive the 2026 World Cup is
00:21shaping up to be. Cheapest? $7,000. FIFA needs to do something about the prices of these tickets.
00:28They caught on the trend of let me make money out of this.
00:31But this chart is just the tip of the iceberg. Flights, hotels and travel to the stadiums are
00:38also expensive, so there's a lot that a fan has to pay to see even one game. I crunched the
00:43numbers
00:44myself and compiled five charts to show just how expensive this year's World Cup is and who's to blame.
00:52Before we move to the next chart, let's talk about ticket categories for a sec,
00:56because they point to a broader trend that we're seeing with this year's tournament costs.
01:01Category one tickets are the most expensive. They're usually located along the sidelines
01:06or closer to midfield. Category two seats are mid-tier, often in corners or in less central
01:13sideline sections. And category three seats are cheaper. They're usually high up in the stadium
01:18or behind the goals. There's also a fourth category which is the cheapest, but those tickets are mostly
01:24reserved. What's interesting is when you compare how prices have changed for different categories.
01:31This chart shows the change over time for category three tickets compared with category one for group
01:37stage matches. The first round of games before the later knockout stage, which tends to be even more
01:43expensive. The increase in costs for this year's category three seats wasn't nearly as much as it
01:50was for the most expensive ones. This represents something that we might call the premiumisation
01:57of the sports fan experience. That's Ben Shields, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management,
02:03who researches the business of sports media and entertainment.
02:06It is a reflection of this broader trend in premium fan experiences here in the US,
02:14and FIFA is capitalising on that, or at least trying to.
02:19But on FIFA's resale market, you can find some pretty pricey tickets even in category three.
02:26Let's pull up this game between Colombia and Portugal on June 27th. In this category three section,
02:33you'll find tickets ranging from a few thousand dollars to nearly twelve thousand. And category three
02:41can reach up to twenty three thousand dollars for this game. More on the resale market in a bit,
02:47because that is a whole other issue. So, ticket prices are the highest they've ever been,
02:53even after adjusting for inflation. But why?
02:57Part of that is supply and demand, right? Next time that it's played here on US soil,
03:05we don't know when that's going to be. Ben's right. When you look at the supply versus demand,
03:11the imbalance is enormous compared with previous years.
03:15To receive 500 million ticket requests, half a billion people.
03:20But FIFA president Gianni Infantino said only seven million tickets were available.
03:25By comparison, FIFA received fewer than a hundred million ticket requests for the 2022 tournament.
03:31In a statement to Business Insider, FIFA said about 104,000 tickets priced at $60 were made available
03:40to fans across the 2026 tournament. Still, demand hasn't been strong everywhere.
03:45In some host cities, resale ticket prices have fallen below $100 as FIFA and sellers struggle to fill
03:53less popular matches. That contrast highlights how uneven the demand really is. And even with strong
04:00demand for certain matches, it still doesn't fully explain why some tickets have skyrocketed to their
04:06thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. There's something else going on here.
04:12This is the first time that FIFA has used dynamic pricing for ticket sales.
04:16People have been frustrated about dynamic pricing for years, whether it's for ride-hailing apps,
04:22concert tickets, Disney parks, or online shopping.
04:26In FIFA's case, it essentially means that it could raise prices when it saw that demand was high.
04:32For example, category one tickets for the final reportedly started at around $6,400,
04:38then jumped to about $8,700, and then to around $11,000 in the final stage of sales.
04:45And for some fans, those rising prices completely changed which teams they could afford to see.
04:52Wachihon Zinghai, a 40-year-old football fan from a village in North East India,
04:57hoped to buy tickets to see England or Portugal, but they were out of his price range.
05:02The cheapest tickets were like $450 to $650. My budget was like $350. Beyond that, I could not go.
05:10Eventually, he gave up on seeing the teams that he originally wanted to and focused on what he could
05:15afford. Two tickets for him and his father-in-law to see the Czech Republic against South Africa
05:20for $140 each. Wachihon was able to snag his tickets through FIFA's last-minute sales phase in
05:27April. But fans who didn't get tickets during any of the previous sales stages were pushed into the
05:32resale market, with prices far higher and largely unregulated in the United States and parts of
05:39Canada. For example, if I lived in the US and I bought a ticket in an early sale for $1
05:44,000,
05:44there's nothing stopping me from turning around and reselling it for double.
05:49But if I lived in Mexico, I couldn't do that. I could only exchange my ticket because of resale
05:55regulations. And any tickets for games in Ontario can only be relisted for the face value price or
06:01lower. Seatpik, a ticket aggregator, found in April that the average resale ticket in any category
06:08cost $1,600. And the average resale tickets for the big final game cost 10 times that.
06:15FIFA told BI that its resale and primary marketplaces are aligned with typical standards
06:21and trends in North American sports and entertainment.
06:26Let's look at the game that I pulled up earlier. Say I buy this nearly $3,000 category 3 resale
06:33ticket.
06:34FIFA shows that the original price was $155. And FIFA takes 15% from the seller
06:41and 15% from the buyer in this transaction.
06:45FIFA and America and everyone is just, they're giving them that chance to take advantage of it.
06:49And they're definitely taking it to the fullest.
06:52But the ticket itself is only part of the cost.
06:56I've calculated that a fan can still shell out a ton of money beyond what they're paying FIFA.
07:01That brings us to our third chart. Flight prices alone can easily dwarf the cost of a ticket.
07:08And if you bought your flight after the start of the Iran war, it's likely higher than expected due
07:13to rising fuel prices. Then there's the cost of your accommodation and transportation to the stadiums.
07:19I calculated that if an Argentina fan was to fly from Buenos Aires to Dallas with a layover in Atlanta
07:25to attend a group stage game against Jordan, they'd spend about $3,361, which includes the tickets,
07:33the flight, and an average three-star downtown hotel. I'm a Scotland fan. So I also looked up how
07:40much it would be to fly from Edinburgh to Boston to see the team's first game against Haiti.
07:46The breakdown is similar. The average group stage game tickets cost a couple of hundred dollars less,
07:52but hotels in Boston cost more, driving up the total. And while we're talking about Boston,
07:58take a look at this extra bit at the end. That represents transportation costs. While FIFA is
08:04expected to generate billions of dollars from the tournament, local governments and transit operators,
08:09not FIFA, are largely responsible for covering the additional costs of handling the massive influx of fans
08:15trying to get to and from the stadiums. Next chart. In Boston, a round-trip train ticket from downtown
08:24to Gillette Stadium, about 20 miles away, usually costs about $20. But during the World Cup,
08:30the city is charging $80. Similarly, New Jersey Transit usually charges $12.90 for a round-trip fare between
08:39Penn Station and the MetLife Stadium. On the day of a match, fans will have to cough up $98 for
08:45the same
08:46trip. In Florida, the Brightline train is also charging a high markup. Because prices have jumped
08:53so much, fans like Mohamed Faraj are finding creative ways to make the World Cup more affordable.
09:00Mohamed, an Iraq supporter living in Boston, bought tickets to all three of Iraq's group stage games for
09:06about $850 total. He and his friends plan to drive the entire route while making Instagram and TikTok
09:12content after some of their past football videos have drawn hundreds of thousands of views.
09:17I've been busy just messaging, emailing different businesses that want to be part of this World Cup
09:23journey to sponsor the trip for us. Mohamed says he's also been setting aside $200 a month since last
09:29November to afford it all. I opened a separate bank account where every single month I would get paid,
09:35money just goes in there, just so it wouldn't be a big chunk. That's the only way that I could
09:39have
09:39handled it. Now, to bring together all the numbers I've crunched and the people that we've talked to,
09:44I broke down what it would cost for a fan of last time's winners, Argentina, to go to the first
09:50three
09:50matches on a budget. If they flew out of Buenos Aires to Houston and then to Kansas City for the
09:56first
09:56match and then flew to Dallas for matches two and three, flights and hotels alone would cost about
10:04$7,000. When I looked in May, the cheapest tickets I found on the resale market for each of those
10:11three
10:11games would cost about $747, $835 and $862. And using public transit in these cities would be a combined $33.
10:24Not too bad. All in all, the Argentina fan would shell out around $9,800.
10:33Just for fun, I also calculated what an Argentina fan would spend if they went to every game from
10:38beginning to end. Assuming the team makes it to the final like last time, a fan would be looking
10:44at about $31,250. FIFA expects to bring in roughly $13 billion during this World Cup cycle,
10:53making 2026 the most lucrative tournament in its history. There is a tension between sport as
11:02an institution that offers a public good to fans versus sport as a business that sells a product and
11:16experience to fans. In the case of the World Cup, I'm sensing a little bit of tension
11:23between these two factors. Meanwhile, fans from many countries can't even afford a single ticket,
11:30let alone the travel costs. For Wurchihon, whose in-laws are covering the cost of flights,
11:36attending even one match meant putting off a major purchase.
11:40Regarding money, my plan was like to buy a laptop this year, during this time. But then I have to
11:47wait a little bit longer. Wurchihon says he earns about 500 rupees a day.
11:52That's five or six dollars. Ant has been cutting back spending ahead of his trip.
11:57We are very, very careful with our spending here. No more holiday. No more buying new things.
12:04Which brings us to my final chart. I calculated what the cheapest available ticket was for a person
12:11to watch their country's team as a proportion of the country's GDP per capita. Or essentially,
12:17how much of their country's average income would be spent to see the national team?
12:22In Haiti, for example, the cheapest ticket cost 89.2 percent of the average income. Even Brazil and
12:30Turkey at 7.2 percent is quite steep. This all brings up an important question.
12:36Who is this year's World Cup really for?
12:39A that I.
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13:01You
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