Commentary: Soaring World Cup ticket prices could bring in US$15b for FIFA, but where will the money go?

NOTRE DAME, Indiana: At the FIFA World Cup, the top scorer gets the “golden boot”, and the best goalkeeper is handed the “golden gloves”. This year’s tournament will also provide organiser FIFA with a golden opportunity to create billions in additional ticket revenues.Ticket prices are so high that even United States President Donald Trump, a billionaire ally of FIFA president Gianni Infantino, said he wouldn’t pay.The concern is that FIFA is pricing out many of the sport’s most devoted fans. In the 2022 Qatar-hosted World Cup, group stage Category 1 tickets - the best seats - cost about US$220, while Qatari residents could purchase tickets for US$11 in some group stage matches. Category 1 tickets to the final were about US$1,600.For the 2026 World Cup, dynamic pricing, which deliberately makes pricing opaque and subject to real-time changes, is being used for the first time. It means ticket prices may vary dramatically both across games and even for a given game over time.

The initial baseline for Category 1 tickets during World Cup 2026 was about US$600 when they first went on sale in the autumn of 2025 but now they generally sell for over US$1,000 and sometimes much higher. The price for Category 1 tickets for the opening game in Mexico City is currently over US$2,500, and even Category 3 tickets, the lowest available tier, are over US$1,000. For the final, Category 1 tickets initially cost over US$6,000 and had exceeded US$32,000 by early May.As an emeritus professor of finance and author of Keeping Score: The Economics Of Big Time Sports, I’ve done some number crunching and predict that increased ticket receipts will help FIFA exceed US$15 billion in revenue this cycle - which would be a record-breaker for football's governing body and significantly more than its 2022 stated goal of US$11 billion.FIFA’s ticket pricing approach may be a logical way to capture at least some of the revenue that normally goes to ticket scalpers, but it’s also unlikely to find a sympathetic audience among potential ticket buyers. Further, what remains unclear is FIFA’s plan on how to spend the extra billions of revenue, with its stated goal to support positive social change belied by a track record of corruption and lack of transparency.