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?
12:39World Cup particularly for the new world in Brazil, all of us will be fortunate to call this world.
12:54I'm now tariff at 7.2 percent todo.
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