10/06/2026

SPORTS WEDNESDAY | JUNE 10, 2026

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2026 WORLD CUP

A rip-off for fans Supporters set to pay exorbitant cost for ticket at World Cup

Ű BY MIGUEL DELANEY

money anyway. Tickets were calculated at less than 50% of total revenue, which was estimated to be a record US$11 billion (RM44b) – US$4 billion (RM16b) more than Qatar – from the original prices promised in the bid book back in 2018. “You could easily chop US$5 billion (RM20b) off and everyone, including Fifa, benefits,” says Moore, now the founding owner of the US club Santa Barbara Sky in California. Weighing over all of this, however, is that Fifa’s redistribution model has also served as a long-criticised vote-returning mechanism. Infantino spreads the money around, and grateful associations elect him back in. And more money was the core part of his manifesto back in 2016. The last few weeks have already brought calls for the president’s re-election from Conmebol and CAF, despite questions over term limits. A similar lack of transparency surrounds how ticket pricing was decided upon. Some of the most senior Fifa figures have no clue. They maintain they were simply presented with plans from the president’s office, which is how every major decision now works. Sources with knowledge of the dynamics around Infantino say he is primarily sur rounded by US-based advisers working “to fully optimise revenue using all tools available”. There appears to be minimal interrogation of the actual merit of this. That alone marks another significant depar ture for Fifa, especially from the last World Cup in the US. Before 1994, tournament architect Alan Rothenberg had multiple ideas about tick ets, which he details in The Big Bounce . Rothenberg wanted “a really high-priced ticket” due to the associated prestige, as well as having every seat at the final priced at US$1,000 (RM4,000). In some echoes to now, too, he argued that “the street value would be at least that” so touts shouldn’t get the benefit. “Fifa said no.” Why? “Overly concerned about average fans’ reaction.” The difference to now is galling. And this was Joao Havelange’s Fifa, notorious for creating a model of governance corruption that the mod ern Fifa now crow as having left behind. “The simple question,” Moore ponders, “is who this World Cup is supposed to be for.” “These are once-in-lifetime chances for fans,” Concannon adds. Fifa barely appear to have even acknowl edged that, other than to consider what price can be put on it. Rather than appreciating a ticket as some thing with that cultural value, though, Fifa has instead repositioned them as an appreciable asset. “It’s like marking up tickets for big concerts to sell,” Moore says. “But that’s not football.” Fifa, notionally the ultimate safeguard, have led the way on commercial pursuits that many of the most corrosive influences have been striving to introduce for years. Infantino has opened the door. Moore describes it as “the early stage of something quite profound”. “It’s the World Cup shifting from mass access global football toward a high-value lim ited-access mega event.” Sporta’s Andrew Smith, who works on the financialisation of sport, believes Fifa have not properly considered long-term effects. “We’ve seen this in other sports. If you price out those actually passionate about it, they lose interest in that pinnacle. There’s a fracturing. The people who create the value in the first place are turned off, and the value is gradually lessened. “The World Cup becomes two-tier. That’s very dangerous for football. It doesn’t have the guardrails for this.” Fifa, of course, are supposed to be that guardrail. Instead, everything seems to be going one way. – The Independent

A S the days tick down to the start of the World Cup, senior Fifa figures under Gianni Infantino are understood to be “very nervous” about other numbers. Ticket sales are nowhere near expectations, despite bombastic talk of 500 million requests. There’s an obvious reason that anyone could have told Fifa. If they are “nervous”, loyal fans are agonising over life-changing money. Bodies like the Football Supporters Association (FSA) and US-based executives like the former Liverpool CEO Peter Moore estimate that it will cost between US$10,000 (RM40,000) and US$35,000 (RM140,000) to follow your team right through. Even the home supporters – including Donald Trump – feel it is far too costly, as indi cated by the low sales reported by The Athletic for the USA’s opening game in Los Angeles. “Fifa overplayed their hand,” one involved source says, “and got the pricing wrong”. “I wouldn’t pay it, either,” Trump even said, as he added he would be “disappointed” if his voters couldn’t go. That must have been espe cially embarrassing for Infantino. So much for the supposedly universal US “culture” of being willing to pay high prices for any major “entertainment event” that Fifa apparently had to abide by. Such arguments play into another schism, which points to how this World Cup may drasti cally influence football’s future. That’s the philosophical tension between the idea of football as a cultural good – most visible in the European model of sport and the UK football governance bill – and US consumerism, where it’s just another commodity. Fifa, officially a non-profit charity notionally safeguarding the game, have overwhelmingly come down on one side. The ticket pricing – headlined by some final tickets listed on Fifa’s resale site for over US$1 million (RM4m) – is all the worse because of the awareness that everything else is going to cost so much. Even qualified teams are still con cerned that they could lose money due to expenses. Fifa couldn’t have been aware of this, yet they have loaded the cost up anyway. And while this might normally have been accepted as the price of a World Cup in an expensive country, many extra costs are direct consequences of Fifa deals. A line by one insider speaks volumes. “It’s a lesson in how to suck the joy out of it.” Welcome to the great World Cup rip-off. Tickets frame everything about this World Cup’s expense, but how did Fifa actually come to this model… and why? It is a huge departure from every previous tournament, with so many jaw-dropping numbers. For the eventual finalists, most fans will pay a minimum of £5,200 (RM27,000) for tickets alone. The initial controversy about such figures may now lead to the absurdity of family mem bers sitting beside each other but paying thou sands of pounds more due to one being fortu nate enough to qualify for the token number of US$60 (RM240) Category 4 tickets created after that outcry. “And we still don’t know where final seated categories will be,” says the FSA’s Thomas Concannon, amid further criticism for how some tickets have had their positions moved. Football Supporters Europe quip that it’s “dynamic categorisation”. Some of those cheaper tickets for England Croatia have still appeared on Fifa’s official resale site for US$2,300 (RM9,200). The issue of this “secondary market” – and how “touting” is legal in the US – has admittedly created a unique challenge for this World Cup, but some of the responses are still baffling. As well as cashing in on huge potential mark-ups, Fifa takes a 15% “resale facilitation fee” and another 15% from the seller.

sible, one source has an obvious response. “Let’s see some transparency”, show where the money actually goes. A greater frustration is that Fifa, who are understood to have reserves of over US$2. billion (RM10b), were going to make huge

The governing body’s persistent line is that all revenue is ultimately redistributed around the game, primarily through the Fifa Forward programme. Even if that were singularly true, and Fifa didn’t also have a duty to make the game acces