We’re just a few weeks away from the start of the FIFA World Cup, which will be held in North America for the first time in 32 years.So far, much of the buzz around the world’s most popular sporting event has been about its high costs: Tickets that run anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars, public transit fares to some matches of $50 or more.For fans, this year’s tournament is shaping up to be much more expensive than past World Cups.Manuel Rueda, a freelance journalist who lives in Bogota, Colombia, has been to every World Cup since 1994. He goes with his dad, who now lives in Venezuela.The two typically go to at least 9 matches each time, Rueda said. Sometimes they catch Colombia in the group stage, and they’ve often attended some of the big games toward the end of the tournament, including the final. The total cost of those trips adds up fast.“It's usually a minimum, like $10,000 per person,” Rueda said. “It's not cheap, even if it's in Qatar or in Russia or in Brazil.”But this year, in the U.S., he expects they’ll pay almost twice that much. That includes the cost of hotels, flights, and especially tickets, even though they’re skipping the final this year. They’ll also miss Colombia playing Portugal in the group stage, because tickets for that match were in the thousands of dollars, Rueda said.“Yeah, whatever, Cristiano Ronaldo is in the game, but it's not worth it,” he said.Tickets to World Cup matches are pricey this year. Thanks to rising jet fuel costs, so is traveling to a host city.alexsl/Getty ImagesAt least Rueda bought their plane tickets to the six different U.S. cities they’ll visit when they were still around $200 each. With rising fuel prices, airfares are climbing fast. LA Times sports reporter Kevin Baxter had some sticker shock as he booked his flights.“The tickets that I had priced a couple of months ago for U.S. group play games, now that I'm actually buying the tickets, they're three and four times more expensive than they were just four or five months ago,” he said.Luckily, he has an expense account that’ll cover the costs. He’s covered seven men’s and women’s World Cups before, including a couple with long distances between host cities.When he booked his travel and lodging across Russia eight years ago, for instance, he said the prices he paid felt reasonable. “I didn't feel like, you know, we were getting gouged,” he said. “This one just feels different.”At least in terms of tickets to the matches, it has been different from past Cups.People in New York City protest FIFA's use of dynamic ticket pricing for the World Cup in September 2025.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesSports economist Victor Matheson of the College of the Holy Cross has receipts from games he attended in 1994, the last time the Cup was in the U.S. Back then, he saw Romania take on Switzerland in Detroit.“So that's a second-tier game in a second-tier city, no insult to Detroit,” Matheson said. He paid $50 for that ticket. With inflation, that’s about $112 today.This year, for a ticket to Scotland versus Morocco in Boston, a similar kind of match, Matheson paid $400.“So, we're talking about a gigantic increase in one generation of the World Cup,” he said.Matheson thinks one reason prices have jumped is that when FIFA brought the World Cup to the U.S. 32 years ago, soccer wasn’t nearly as popular here as it is now.“You might argue back in ‘94 they were willing to give tickets away a little cheaper than they might have, trying to invest in the United States so that they could make money later,” he said. “But they’re certainly taking in their profits this time.In a written statement, a FIFA spokesperson said the organization is “focused on ensuring fair access to our game for existing but also prospective fans.” The spokesperson added that FIFA released at least 1,000 tickets priced at $60 for each match, and noted that FIFA reinvests revenue from the Cup in soccer development programs around the world.